Turtles all the way down

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"Turtles all the way down" refers to an infinite regression belief about cosmology, the nature of the universe.

Contents

[edit] Origin

A reference to this elusive anecdote, preceding Stephen Hawking's usage, is on a recorded talk by the religious philosopher Alan W. Watts, who uses it to humorously illustrate both infinite regress, in cosmological imagery, and the perils of religious/mythic myopia.

However, the most widely known version appears in Stephen Hawking's 1988 book A Brief History of Time, which starts:

“ 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 center 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!"[1] ”

It is possible that the lady's comment came after Russell's 1927 lecture Why I Am Not a Christian. In it, while discounting the First Cause argument intended to be a proof of God's existence, Russell comments:

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 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 and philosopher 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.[2][3]

Additionally, Stephen Fry, in an episode of the BBC's comedy-quiz show QI (Series 1, episode 2), attributes the turtles anecdote to an exchange between an elderly lady and William James. Also, David Sloan Wilson does the same in his book Evolution for Everyone (Delacorte, 2007): 133.

Philosophical allusion to the story goes back at least as far as John Locke. In his 1690 tract An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke compares one who would say that properties inhere in "substance" to the Indian who said the world was on an elephant which was on a tortoise "but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied -- something, he knew not what."[4]

Henry David Thoreau, in his journal entry of 4 May 1852,[5] writes:

Men are making speeches… all over the country, but each expresses only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stands on truth. They are merely banded together as usual, one leaning on another and all together on nothing; as the Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and had nothing to put under the tortoise.

[edit] Citation

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 references in various Indian classical texts, 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. (Whether this is a Hindu belief or not is subject to debate.) A whimsical allusion to this myth appears in Wilfrid Sellars' 1956 Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind:

authoritative nonverbal episodes... would constitute the tortoise on which stands the elephant on which rests the edifice of empirical knowledge.

Carl Sagan recited a version of the story as an apocryphal anecdote in his 1979 book Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science, as an exchange between a "Western traveler" and an "Oriental philosopher."

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."[6]

[edit] Interpretations

 This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007)

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.

The turtle problem also often arises in debates pertaining to creationism, for instance in the debate over intelligent design and its postulated intelligent designer. By raising the question of the need for a designer for objects with irreducible complexity, intelligent design also raises the question, "what designed the designer?" according to critics.

[edit] 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., Arthur Stanley Eddington, Thomas Huxley, Linus Pauling, or Carl Sagan) although the rest is the same.

[edit] In culture

  • 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." In his introduction to The Discworld Companion, Pratchett uses the phrase in a different sense, describing the recurrence of the Earth on a turtle in myth as "turtles all the way". Additionally, 'who polices the police' appears several times in Discworld novels, most notably in 'Thud.'
  • Stephen King in The Dark Tower series makes several references to a 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". The appearance of a palm-sized scrimshaw turtle likewise makes allusions to Pratchett's Small Gods when described as a "tiny god".
  • Charles Stross's science fiction collection Accelerando: "Up or down, is it turtles all the way, or is there something out there that's more real than we are?"
  • Track 3 of Hallucinogen's album In Dub is entitled "Gamma Goblins ('Its Turtles All The Way Down' Mix)".

[edit] See also


[edit] References

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Hawking, Stephen (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0553053401. 
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ William James published a different version in his book The Will To Believe (1898), specifically in the essay "The Sentiment of Rationality" (p. 104 of The Will To Believe in the Dover reprint):
    Like the old woman in the story who described the world as resting on a rock, and then explained that rock to be supported by another rock, and finally when pushed with questions said it was rocks all the way down, -- he who believes this to be a radically moral universe must hold the moral order to rest either on an absolute and ultimate should, or on a series of shoulds all the way down.
  4. ^ Locke, John (1959). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Vol. 1. New York: Dover, 391-392. 
  5. ^ http://www.sniggle.net/Experiment/index.php?entry=excerpts04#04May52
  6. ^ Antonin Scalia. RAPANOS v. UNITED STATES. Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute's Supreme Court collection.
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