The cosmological hypothesis, that the earth rests on an infinite pile of turtles, we quote heree version from “A Brief History of Time”: 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!”
This story is obviously quoted in the A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes from which we took the above quote. The book The Science of Discworld IV – Judgement Day recalls this anecdote and mentions the “Bief History of Time”. Also in the book The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah this history is mentioned.
The book Turtles All the Way Down not only recalls the story, but the title itself is a reference!
In addition to the aforementioned Science of Discworld IV, this theme appears in 3 other books related to this universe: The Science of Discworld refers to this “phenomenon”, in The Folklore of Discworld a variation on this story is referenced, while in The Discworld Companion, The Discworld Companion Updated and Turtle Recall, after the encyclopedic part, it is used as the name of one chapter.
In our music database, we have three songs with some references to this concept:
– McKinley – Pillowcase Sail
– mewithoutYou – Tortoises All the Way Down
– Sturgill Simpson – Turtles All the Way Down
