Turtles all the way down

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"Turtles all the way down" refers to a infinite regression belief about the nature of the universe (see Cosmology).

Contents

1 Overview
2 Interpretations
3 Veracity
4 Related concepts
5 References
6 External links
7 See also

Overview

The most widely known version today appears in Stephen Hawking's 1988 book A Brief History of Time, which begins with an anecdote about an encounter between a scientist and an old lady:

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.

At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise."

The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?"

"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down."

The association of Russell with this story is most likely due to his telling a version of it in his 1927 essay Why I Am Not a Christian, in discounting the "First Cause" argument intended to be a proof of God's existence:

If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that.

The origins of this story are uncertain. In J. R. (Haj) Ross's 1967 linguistics dissertation, Constraints on Variables in Syntax, the scientist is identified as the Harvard psychologist William James. Of the story's provenance, Ross writes:

I have been unable to find any published reference to it, so it may be that I have attributed it to the wrong man, or that it is apocryphal. Be that as it may, because of its bull's-eye relevance to the study of syntax, I have retold it here.

The story can also be found in Bernard Nietschmann's "When the Turtle Collapses, the World Ends," Natural History, 83(6):34 (June-July 1974). A version of the story also appears in Clifford Geertz's, "Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture," in his 1973 book The Interpretation of Culture, with the scientist and old woman replaced by an Englishman and an Indian respectively. This version may be a reference to various Hindu beliefs, including the myth that Vishnu's second avatar was Kurma, a tortoise on whose back the Mandara mountain rested, or that the tortoise Chukwa supports the elephant Maha-pudma who upholds the world.

Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court discussed his "favored version" of the tale in a footnote to his plurality opinion in Rapanos v. United States (decided June 19, 2006):

In our favored version, an Eastern guru affirms that the earth is supported on the back of a tiger. When asked what supports the tiger, he says it stands upon an elephant; and when asked what supports the elephant he says it is a giant turtle. When asked, finally, what supports the giant turtle, he is briefly taken aback, but quickly replies "Ah, after that it is turtles all the way down."

Interpretations

The differences between the two forms of the anecdote point to the difference in its intended meaning.

For Hawking, the turtle story is one of two accounts of the nature of the universe; he asserts that the turtle theory is patently ridiculous, but admits that his own theories may be just as ridiculous. "Only time will tell," he concludes.

For Geertz, however, the story is patently wise, teaching us that we will never get to the bottom of things.

This comparison also reveals a difference between the positivist and interpretive, or hermeneutic approach to the interpretation of myths. Positivists read myths literally and find them false and foolish; interpretivists read them metaphorically or allegorically and find them true and profound.

The phrase "turtles all the way down", or sometimes simply "a turtle problem" are often used to describe other infinite regressions. For instance, the question of "who polices the police" may be regarded as a turtle problem.

Veracity

The anecdote has achieved the status of an urban legend on the internet, as there are numerous versions in which the name of the scientist varies (e.g., Thomas Huxley, Arthur Stanley Eddington, or Carl Sagan) although the rest is the same.

Related concepts

In the popular Discworld comic fantasy books by Terry Pratchett, the Discworld is a flat disc that rests on the backs of four huge elephants which are in turn standing on the back of an enormous turtle as it slowly swims through space. In the book Small Gods, the question "what does the turtle stand on?" is asked, and gets the reply "It's a turtle, for heaven's sake. It swims. That's what turtles are for." Pratchett, in explaining that the myth of the Earth on a turtle seems surprisingly common, has mentioned that, in a different sense, it does seem to be "turtles all the way". www.turtlesalltheway.com is also the name of Pratchett's former website.

In the 1940 film version of The Thief of Bagdad, this dialogue occurs between the protagonist (Abu) and a giant genie, while they are flying above the Himalayas:

Abu: "Where are we now?" Genie: "Above the roof of the world!" Abu: "Has the world got a roof?" Genie: "Of course! Supported by seven pillars. And the seven pillars are set on the shoulders of a genie whose bigness is beyond thought. And the genie stands on an eagle, and the eagle on a bull, and the bull on a fish, and the fish swims in the sea of eternity!"

Stephen King in The Dark Tower series makes several references to the turtle holding up the earth, in various metaphors. Later in the series, he makes it clear that the origin of this metaphor is a play on the incident with the woman declaring that it's "turtles all the way down".

Far-seer, Part One of Robert J. Sawyer's three-part novel, the Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy, retells the story, replacing turtles with armourbacks (ankylosaurs).

Dr. Seuss's children's story Yertle the Turtle, according to the fictional television cartoon character Lisa Simpson, is "possibly the greatest book ever written on the subject of turtle stacking."

References

Turtles All the Way Down; Prerequisites to Personal Genius (1986) is a book by Judith DeLozier and John Grinder (ISBN 1555520227).

External links

Ross, John R. (1967). Constraints on variables in syntax. (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Available at [MIT Theses]. See page iv of the ms., page 4 of the electronic file.