For mechanization is achieved by fragmentation of any process and by putting the fragmented parts in a series. Yet, as David Hume showed in the eighteenth century, there is no principle of causality in a mere sequence. That one thing follows another accounts for nothing. Nothing follows from following, except change. So the greatest of all reversals occurred with electricity, that ended sequence by making things instant. With instant speed the causes of things began to emerge to awareness again, as they had not done with things in sequence and in concatenation accordingly. Instead of asking which came first, the chicken or the egg, it suddenly seemed that a chicken was an egg’s idea for getting more eggs.

There is a meta level irony in this paragraph that points to what is often a flaw, but many times an asset to MM’s writing. “That one thing follows another accounts for nothing,” could be taken as a criticism of the disjointed writing here. “So” in “So the greatest of all reversals” stretches the imagination of the ability of that word to connect that sentence with the previous. This all seems to be unrelated, or un-sequenced. However, what is being suggested here, and has been suggested earlier, is that human thought tends to take the form of external processes. In the mechanical age, people take the metaphor of thought as a mechanism, or about the nature of things in sequence. In the electronic age, where sequence is perhaps even more important, but sequences are so fast as to be hidden from view, people take the metaphor of thought to be a instant computation.

The supposed paradox of the chicken and the egg could actually be a consequence of sequential/mechanical thinking. To ask if the chicken came before the eggs is to assume a chicken came to this world fully formed. Of course, a chicken evolved from some other kind of bird which evolved from a reptile and so forth–all of which produced eggs. The answer is obviously: the egg came first. But thinking about a chicken mechanically, we think about it having a maker–similarly to thinking Adam was made from clay. Thinking about a chicken as an “egg’s idea” at least metaphorically, seems closer to the truth.