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December 2, 2003

turtles all the way down

Today, i was reminded of a parable that means so much to me. I remember the roots as being Hindu, but Google seems to have a million versions of it, so i'm not sure of the details. (What on earth do you do when Google is internally inconsistent? ::giggle::)

"The world rests on the shoulders of an elephant." "What does the elephant stand upon?" "The elephant stands upon the back of a turtle." "And what does the turtle stand upon?" "Oh, after that, it is turtles all the way down."

Infinite recursion, closed nonorientable surfaces. Everything is interpreted... interpretations built on interpretations. No beginning, no end. No eternal truth, only process. The perfect mantra for all of my techno-"soci/anthrop"ology discussions lately. Chew on turtles for a day and the world looks much more whimsical.

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Posted by zephoria at December 2, 2003 1:16 AM | TrackBack

Comments (6)

Mark Brady:

Terry Pratchett has adopted this idea in his string of books based on the "discworld" (which sits on the back on four elephants, which stand on a turtle, etc, etc). Great books if you want a chuckle or two. More info here

Posted by Mark Brady | December 2, 2003 3:26 AM

Posted on December 2, 2003 03:26

joe:

Wasn't this from Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time?" I'm pretty sure of this... and the older woman was Hindu.

Posted by joe | December 2, 2003 7:14 AM

Posted on December 2, 2003 07:14

ken:

You can also find it in
Geertz, Clifford. "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture." In The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. I don't have a copy here or I'd provide more info . . .
“Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is… There are a number of ways of escaping this—turning culture into folklore and collecting it, turning it into traits and counting it, turning it into institutions and classifying it, turning it into structures and toying with it. But they are escapes. The fact is that to commit oneself to a semiotic concept of culture and an interpretive approach to the study of it is to commit oneself to a view of ethnographic assertion as… ‘essentially contestable.’ Anthropology, or at least interpretive anthropology, is a science whose progress is marked less by a perfection of the consensus than by a refinement of debate. What gets better is the precision with which we vex each other.” (29)

Posted by ken | December 2, 2003 11:50 AM

Posted on December 2, 2003 11:50

Rate My Rack:

Yes the older woman was Hindu.

Posted by Rate My Rack | December 2, 2003 2:47 PM

Posted on December 2, 2003 14:47

taterhead:

I have a store selling 'turtles all the way down' stuff:

http://www.cafeshops.com/turtleswaydown

Enjoy!

Posted by taterhead | July 25, 2004 4:35 AM

Posted on July 25, 2004 04:35