Which came first,
the chicken or the egg?
This old puzzler has, apparently, been solved: Popular Mechanics (among others) tells me so.
When it comes to the simple answer to the question as it relates to Gallus gallus domesticus (a.k.a. the chicken), that riddle’s been largely solved thanks to evolution. At some point thousands of years ago, ancient chicken breeders chose two tame jungle fowl (gallus gallus) and the resulting union produced the egg of the world’s first genetically distinct chicken. In summary: egg predates chicken.
OK then. Now, we could go down a rabbit hole here (Which came first, the rabbit or the hole? You see how this can get out of hand.) and look at the implications of a 2024 article published in the prestigious science journal, Nature, and summarized in, you guessed it, Popular Mechanics: the less prestigious but, well, more popular magazine even if they do say so themselves. This article reports that some microbe that predated animals had an “embryonic process” resembling mitosis. So maybe the egg predated all animal life, in some sense, as weird as that sounds.
But we’re not going there. Instead, we are going to consider a related philosophical puzzler.
Which came first,
the view or the bench?
You might not think this is quite as tricky as the chicken/egg version. After all, who would install a bench where was no view? I’m glad you asked. I don’t know who did it–in this case, I acquit ancient chicken breeders–but I do know that someone did it.
Now, to be fair (always popular), we could enquire about the history at play here.
Was there ever a view
at this location?
Like, maybe before the reeds and grasses growing along the completely hidden-from-view pond grew up to hide said view? Like, maybe before the tree branch/trunk bent over to fill in the eye-level vista for anyone sitting on the bench? Like, maybe. And if so, then it’s been a while since there was any view of any kind from this bench.
But as an occasional user of this park, my question is neither philosophical nor historical: it’s just practical.
Will there ever be a view here,
either again or for the first time?
If not, I’m thinking it’s time to move this bench to a view. Maybe I could get Popular Mechanics to write an article about it to drum up public pressure to do the right thing.
Why Popular Mechanics? I hear they have a lot of readers.
