"Turtles all the way down" is a jocular expression of the infinite regress problem in cosmology
posed by the "unmoved mover" paradox.
The metaphor in the anecdote represents a popular notion of the myth that Earth is actually
flat and is supported on the back of a World Turtle, which itself is propped up by a chain
of larger and larger turtles.
Questioning what the final turtle might be standing on, the anecdote humorously concludes
that it is "turtles all the way down".
The phrase was used by Stephen Hawking in 1988, but has been commonly known since at
least the early 20th century.
A comparable metaphor describing the circular cause and consequence for the same problem
is the "chicken and egg problem".
The same problem in epistemology is known as the Münchhausen trilemma.
Origin The origins of the turtle story are uncertain.
The most widely known version appears in Stephen Hawking's 1988 book A Brief History of Time,
which starts:
A well-known scientist 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 tortoises all the way down!"
Robert Anton Wilson's book Prometheus Rising opens with the William James version of "turtles
all the way down".
In John R. 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:
After a lecture on cosmology and the structure of the solar system, William James was accosted
by a little old lady.
"Your theory that the sun is the centre of the solar system, and the earth is a ball
which rotates around it has a very convincing ring to it, Mr. James, but it's wrong.
I've got a better theory," said the little old lady.
"And what is that, madam?"
Inquired James politely.
"That we live on a crust of earth which is on the back of a giant turtle,"
Not wishing to demolish this absurd little theory by bringing to bear the masses of scientific
evidence he had at his command, James decided to gently dissuade his opponent by making
her see some of the inadequacies of her position.
"If your theory is correct, madam," he asked, "what does this turtle stand on?"
"You're a very clever man, Mr. James, and that's a very good question," replied the
little old lady, "but I have an answer to it.
And it is this: The first turtle stands on the back of a second, far larger, turtle,
who stands directly under him."
"But what does this second turtle stand on?"
Persisted James patiently.
To this the little old lady crowed triumphantly.
"It's no use, Mr. James---it's turtles all the way down."
In 1905, Oliver Corwin Sabin, Bishop of the Evangelical Christian Science Church, wrote:
The old original idea which was enunciated first in India, that the world was flat and
stood on the back of an elephant, and the elephant did not have anything to stand on
was the world's thought for centuries.
That story is not as good as the Richmond negro preachers who said the world was flat
and stood on a turtle.
They asked him what the turtle stood on and he said another turtle, and they asked what
that turtle stood on and he said another turtle, and finally they got him in a hole and he
said.
"I tell you there are turtles all the way down."
The earliest version of the story in its "turtle" form appeared in 1854, attributed by bible
skeptic Joseph Barker to preacher Joseph Frederick Berg:
My opponent’s reasoning reminds me of the heathen, who, being asked on what the world
stood, replied, “On a tortoise.”
But on what does the tortoise stand?
“On another tortoise.”
With Mr. Barker, too, there are tortoises all the way down.
Many 20th-century attributions point to William James as the source.
James referred to the fable of the elephant and tortoise several times, but told the infinite
regress story with "rocks all the way down" in his 1882 essay, "Rationality, Activity
and Faith":
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."
In the form of "rocks all the way down", the story predates James to at least 1838, when
it was printed in an unsigned anecdote about a schoolboy and an old woman living in the
woods:
"The world, marm," said I, anxious to display my acquired knowledge, "is not exactly round,
but resembles in shape a flattened orange; and it turns on its axis once in twenty-four
hours."
"Well, I don't know anything about its axes," replied she, "but I know it don't turn round,
for if it did we'd be all tumbled off; and as to its being round, any one can see it's
a square piece of ground, standing on a rock!"
"Standing on a rock! but upon what does that stand?"
"Why, on another, to be sure!"
"But what supports the last?"
"Lud!
child, how stupid you are!
There's rocks all the way down!"
There is an allusion to the story in David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion:
How can we satisfy ourselves without going on in infinitum?
And, after all, what satisfaction is there in that infinite progression?
Let us remember the story of the Indian philosopher and his elephant.
It was never more applicable than to the present subject.
If the material world rests upon a similar ideal world, this ideal world must rest upon
some other; and so on, without end.
It were better, therefore, never to look beyond the present material world.
Claimed Hindu myths
Hawking's suggested connection to Russell may be due to 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.'"
Henry David Thoreau, in his journal entry of 4 May 1852, 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.
Philosophical allusion to the story goes back at least as far as John Locke.
In his 1689 tract An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke compares one who would
say that properties inherent 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."
Despite these accounts, Hindu myths do not actually contain the myth in the form described.
Locke appears to have taken the idea from Samuel Purchas.
Some accounts involve the earth supported by a single unsupported tortoise, as Jñanaraja
argued: "A vulture, which has only little strength, rests in the sky holding a snake
in its beak for a prahara [three hours].
Why can [the deity] in the form of a tortoise, who possesses an inconceivable potency, not
hold the Earth in the sky for a kalpa [billions of years]?"
Other accounts The story can also be found in Bernard Nietschmann's
"When the Turtle Collapses, the World Ends", Natural History, 83(6):34.
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.
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:
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."
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 although the rest is the
same.
Allusions in popular culture The Discworld novels, written by Terry Pratchett
involve a fictional flat world which rests on the back of four giant elephants, all of
whom stand on the back of a giant World-Turtle called A'Tuin.
Once when questioned about what the turtle sits on, it is related that the turtle doesn't
sit on anything.
It swims.
Stephen King uses this in his mythos, with our Universe having been created from the
vomit of a World Turtle called Maturin.
A teacher in Lev Grossman's The Magicians relays the Russell version of the story while
discussing the nature of magic.
Far-Seer, Part One of Robert J. Sawyer's three-part novel, the Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy, retells
the story, replacing turtles with armourbacks.
Thomas King uses the story to frame each of his five Massey Lectures collected in The
Truth About Stories.
"Turtles All the Way Down" was the title of the final episode of Awake, and was the final
line of the female psychiatrist at the end.
"Turtles All the Way Down" is the title of a song on Buffalo hardcore punk band Every
Time I Die's fifth studio album New Junk Aesthetic.
"Turtles All The Way Down" is also inscribed in many walls and surfaces in the video game
Borderlands.
"Turtles All the Way Down" is an achievement in the video game World of Warcraft, for fishing
up the sea turtle mount.
In #113 of the graphic novel Fables by Bill Willingham titled "In those days," the story
"A delicate balance" tells how a king punished his unfaithful queen by turning her into a
turtle, and condemning her to carry her homeland in a teacup on her back.
Several stories later, a fisherman and his son reach the wall at the edge of the world,
and the father explains that the world rests in a teacup sitting on top of a turtle, and
"it's turtles all the way down."
In the game Cookie Clicker, the achievement for producing 100 trillion cookies is "Cookies
all the way down."
Scott Meyer’s Basic Instructions webcomic postulates the theory of fractal mistakes
using this concept: “We’ve discovered the secret of the universe!
It’s all a self-sustaining chain-reaction of errors!
It’s made of mistakes all the way down!”
Turtles All the Way Down is the title of a song by country outlaw artist Sturgill Simpson,
which discusses human understanding of space and time.
Douglas Hofstadter uses this in relation to one of his themes in his book, "Gödel, Escher,
Bach" See also
Footnotes