A Klein Bottle is a closed surface with only one side, basically the bottle equivalent of the Möbius strip. There is no real inside or outside.

It could illustrate the chicken vs. egg problem in that visually you have a small chicken, seemingly inside a big egg, but mathematically, neither is inside of the other.
-- placid_turmoil, Mar 01 2009

Klein Bottle illustration http://www1.uni-ak....og/klein_bottle.jpg
[placid_turmoil, Mar 01 2009]

[+] Wow! A better (and visual/tactile) metaphor for the chicken/egg paradox!

(For a name: "Chicken/Egg McMöbius" strip might also work. Topologically speaking, as you mentioned, they are the same...)

If your idea, [placid_turmoil], is original then it's brilliant. But then that only begs the question: can you make a rock/paper/scissors klein bottle?
-- Speed Razor, Mar 02 2009


Thank you! I can't guarantee that I am the first person ever to have thought of the idea, but I've certainly never heard/seen it before, nor found it on google. (By the way, this page is already indexed on google, amazing!)

I agree that your name is more accessible, but it sounds a bit like a sandwich at Mickey D's ;)
-- placid_turmoil, Mar 02 2009


The problem is that they aren't analogous.
-- wagster, Mar 02 2009


They are analogous in the sense that in both cases it seems like there should be a hierarchical order, but there isn't. The Klein bottle's outside is at the same time its inside. The chicken is at the same time the egg's cause and its effect.
-- placid_turmoil, Mar 02 2009



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