Date: Sun, 7 Apr 1996 20:12:09 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Why did the chicken cross the road?


What do our philosophers (Jukka? ... Ralph? ... Justin? ... Hans D?) make 
out of the following? -- Jerry

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Steve Wright <sjwright-AT-vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au>
Subject: chicken.html

I found the following at http://www.duke.edu/~tjb/chicken.html
<snip>
______________________________

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Plato: for the greater good
 
Marx: it was historically inevitable
 
Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
 
Epicurus: For fun.
 
Emerson: It did not cross the road; it transcended it.
 
Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
 
Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
 
Heisenberg: Because we calculated its velocity, we could not be sure
which side of the street it was on anymore.
 
Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a
chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road,
but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend
with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the
princely chicken's dominion maintained.
 
Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered
within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each
interpretation is equally valid as the author's intent can never be
discerned, because structuralism is dead.

de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find
out
 
Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the
establishment would let it take.
 
Douglas Adams: 42
 
Nietzche: To indulge in the act of crossing itself, regardless of
whether it reaches the other side
 
Skinner: Because the influences which have pervaded its sensorium
>from birth have caused it to tend to cross roads, even while
believing that it does so if its free will.
 
Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated
that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture,
and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurances into being.
 
Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the
chicken found it necessary to cross the road
 
Wittgenstein: The possiblity of 'crossing' was encoded into the
objects 'chicken' and 'road', and circumstances came into being
which caused the actualization of this potential occurance
 
Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road, or the road crossed
the chicken, depends on your frame of reference.
 
Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
 
Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most
astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic,
unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such a
herculean achievement formerly relegated to human pedestrians is
truly a remarkable occurance
 
Dali: the fish
 
Darwin: It was the next logical step after coming down from the
trees
 
Hume: Out of custom and habit.
 
Pyrrho the skeptic: What road?
 
Thoreau: To live deliberately... and suck all the marrow out of
life.
 
* Visit Tom Land again.


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