Feb 28, 17 / Ari 03, 01 11:29 UTC

A tree came first or it's seed came first in nature ? ? ?  

In nature ,there was a seed or there was a tree. It is a typical question for philosophers please think and write your comment to solve it.

Feb 28, 17 / Ari 03, 01 13:12 UTC

Seeds came first.

The genetic material of the tree was first in seed form, which mutated from something that was not a tree. Thus, the seed was first.

Feb 28, 17 / Ari 03, 01 17:16 UTC

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Feb 28, 17 / Ari 03, 01 17:28 UTC

The answer is that our naive understanding of the beginnings and ends of discrete objects does not correlate strongly to material reality.

Mar 6, 17 / Ari 09, 01 17:04 UTC

Invoke evolution and the tree must be there to grow the seed, and the chicken must be there to lay the egg. But we're getting slightly ahead of ourselves here. This all happened a long time ago, and there was no-one taking notes. There is much open to interpretation, argument etc - but some things are more or less assured.

First came the single cell organism.

Those without a reproductive cycle rapidly became extinct as environmental stresses overcame the design. Those with reproductive cycle eventually overcame the environmental stresses.

Then two or more single cell organisms found mutual benefit - the "waste" of one enabling survival of the other. Eventually forming into a more complex system that's more resilient, "adopting" other organisms into the collective and mutating existing to become even more resilient until the most basic multicellular single organisms - with inherent reprodructive ability - became recognisable.

You need seeds to grow trees - unless you've something that reproduces over time and becomes a tree.

Mar 6, 17 / Ari 09, 01 17:22 UTC

Invoke evolution and the tree must be there to grow the seed, and the chicken must be there to lay the egg.

This depends entirely on whether or not you consider the adjective in a 'chicken egg' to be derived from what laid the egg, or the contents of the egg.

Technically speaking the first chicken egg didn't have to come from the first chicken. That which we now call a chicken would have mutated from something that wasn't a chicken, but was very chicken-like. The contents of the egg, the genetic material, would become the first real 'chicken'. Thus, the egg was a 'chicken egg' because its contents were the first chicken, when defined by its contents.

If, however, you are of the opinion that the creature which laid the egg describes what kind of egg it is, then the chicken has to come first because of the very premise of your definition. You cannot have a 'chicken egg' because you have defined an egg as possessing an adjective appropriate to the creature which laid it, not its contents.

By the first definition, where the contents of the egg determine its adjective, all the eggs purchased in the store laid by chickens but with unfertilized embryos in them are not chicken eggs at all, but just eggs. They gain no identifiers because they cannot grow into any organism.

By the second definition, where the creature which lays the eggs determines its adjective, eggs in the store are 'chicken eggs', even though they will never become a chicken themselves.

A tree follows similar rules. Thus, this argument cannot be answered without first identifying under which premise we are identifying a 'seed'.