Turtles all the way down.
“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!””
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
I know I should come up with some deep story about the where the turtles end, who feeds them, how a dome holds a plate so still, infinite regression, etc.
Wrong.
Here’s a turtle eating a watermelon. nom nom nom.
PLEASE send in some turtles!!
This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 9:26 pm and is filed under turtles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
12:25 pm on August 29th, 2010
This is my very favorite story.. I was in the middle of reading “Timothy” by Verlyn Klinkenborg when I heard it, and had just bought my first concrete tortoise for our very small cactus garden — no room for a real one… Thanks for the reminder of where is came from..