The Problem of the One and the Many / Which Comes First: The Chicken or the Egg?

One of the most urgent questions facing the human race now, at the beginning of the twenty first century, is this:

Which comes first: the chicken or the egg?

Laugh if you will, gentle reader, but it is only half a joke. It's also one formulation and instance of the first and foremost problem in Philosophy, the Problem of the One and the Many.

Thales of Miletus, the first philosopher, grappled with this Problem of problems, so did Parmenides, so did Plato and Aristotle; so have many other men of notable genius. What is more, you and I face it. It is at once the most profound and urgent problem of the human race, and the most universal, reaching and touching every last John and Jane.

When?! Where?!

You do not see it? Let me show you. Egg and chicken are very different, but, at the same time, there is necessarily a common sameness underlying their difference. In fact, this enduring sameness lasts from generation to generation. This is obvious. Indisputable. Even banal. No one questions the reality of the propagation of the chicken species.

Here's the kicker: Where is this sameness common to both chicken and egg?! If it resides in the chicken, then the egg is deprived of this common sameness and no longer belongs to the reproductive cycle of the chicken. Similarly, if the common sameness that embraces chicken and egg is all enclosed within the egg, the chicken no longer enjoys communion in life with the egg. One way or the other, the reproductive cycle would be truncated, the chicken species would go extinct.

Where is the common sameness underlying the reproduction of chickens via eggs, from generation to generation?! This much is clear: it is not in any particular chicken or egg. Therefore, it must at the same time be within each chicken and egg but not trapped within any individual. But it must be real because the differences between chicken and egg are real!

This is a first example of the One and the Many: the One is this common sameness in which the individual chicken and egg are "embedded", the Many are the individuals, namely, the chicken and the egg. The Problem is this: how is such a reality as this One possible? It would seem that the particular individuals in the Many would parcel the One into many, fragmenting its oneness; or that the One would annihilate the differences given among the Many individuals, absorbing them into an undifferentiated, massive oneness. Instead, we have a more or less stable balance between the Many and the One.

Or consider that the fish is in the sea, and the sea is in the fish. As before, there are real and irreducible differences between the fish and the sea, so that neither is the sea the fish nor the fish the sea. Therefore, there must be a common sameness overarching the differences between fish and sea. If this common sameness and Oneness were not there, fish and sea could not coexist. Why? Because if fish and sea were completely different and diverse, neither could the fish be in the sea nor the sea be in the fish! The Oneness, therefore, is a necessary condition for fish and sea to be different. Therefore, the Oneness must preexist the differences between fish and sea; just as the Oneness of the chicken-egg relation must preexist the difference between chicken and egg. Here again, the Problem of the One and the Many raises its head.

Or again, we can repeat the argument for any two different things, call them "X" and "Y". If X and Y are different, as we suppose, can they be absolutely and totally different? Can they be so different that nothing in X has anything to do with Y, and vice versa, so that nothing in Y has anything to do with X? But if that were the case, then X and Y would have to be isolated in two diverse universes! And these two universes would have to never touch or have anything in common, otherwise that common point in the two universes would be a common sameness in X and Y. In fact, if they had no common sameness, our minds could not even think of both X and Y, because our mind would then be something that both X and Y had as a point in common. In other words, X and Y cannot be absolutely different, because such a difference could neither exist in reality or in our thinking of them. When something is absurd, it is literally unthinkable. Absolute differences, therefore, are absurd, because they are impossible in being and in thought.

So we conclude that X and Y, or any two different things (chicken and egg, fish and sea) must have a common sameness between them, for otherwise, their difference could not exist, and they could neither exist or be thought. Furthermore, this common sameness must preexist the differences, and is a necessary condition for them.

We have thus arrived at the threshold of the Problem of the One and the Many. Much is left to be investigated. I think I've shown that the One of necessity is a condition for the Many. What precisely is the relationship between the One and the Many? Much depends upon how we answer this question.

I said above that the Problem of the One and the Many is the most pressing and important question that faces humanity, both as a whole and for each individual person. How we understand the crucial and delicate relationship between One and Many will determine whether we as a civilization and as individual consciences are theists, pantheists, agnostics or atheists or nihilists. Hence, the importance of the Problem of the One and the Many, for the world, and for each of us.

That suffices for a first posting. I hope to bring out these last points in a subsequent reflection.