"It's turtles all the way down, Mister"
SJF 1959
inconclusive. I now lay it at the feet of the distinguished alt.folklore.urban
newsgroup, in humble hope of enlightenment.
> So we're sitting around after dinner this evening, and a friend refers to the
> aforementioned punchline of the famous anthropologist-and-member-of-
> tribal-culture joke.
>
> My friends wonder if this is entirely fictional, or based on an actual
> conversation. Speculation will not satisfy this group - what they are
looking
> for is the earliest documented version of the story, and some clue about
> whether it was originally presented as a joke or a factual account.
Regards from Deborah
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Rich Lafferty
>I posted this query to alt.fan.cecil-adams, but the responses were
>inconclusive. I now lay it at the feet of the distinguished alt.folklore.urban
>newsgroup, in humble hope of enlightenment.
>
>> So we're sitting around after dinner this evening, and a friend refers to the
>> aforementioned punchline of the famous anthropologist-and-member-of-
>> tribal-culture joke.
>>
>> My friends wonder if this is entirely fictional, or based on an actual
>> conversation. Speculation will not satisfy this group - what they are
>looking
>> for is the earliest documented version of the story, and some clue about
>> whether it was originally presented as a joke or a factual account.
Metacite from anthropological journal will follow once I get home,
assuming I can find the damn thing.
-Rich
--
Rich Lafferty ---------------------------------------------------------
IITS/Computing Services | "Oderint dum metuant."
Concordia University | -- Lucius Accius (170-90 BC).
ri...@vax2.concordia.ca -----------------------------------------[McQ]--
Rich Lafferty
>SJF 1959 <sjf...@aol.com> wrote:
>>I posted this query to alt.fan.cecil-adams, but the responses were
>>inconclusive. I now lay it at the feet of the distinguished alt.folklore.urban
>>newsgroup, in humble hope of enlightenment.
>>
>>> So we're sitting around after dinner this evening, and a friend refers to the
>>> aforementioned punchline of the famous anthropologist-and-member-of-
>>> tribal-culture joke.
>>>
>>> My friends wonder if this is entirely fictional, or based on an actual
>>> conversation. Speculation will not satisfy this group - what they are
>>looking
>>> for is the earliest documented version of the story, and some clue about
>>> whether it was originally presented as a joke or a factual account.
>
>Metacite from anthropological journal will follow once I get home,
>assuming I can find the damn thing.
Er, the cite I was hoping for was in a book I no longer own. Figures.
I *did* find Geertz talking about it:
"There is an Indian story -- at least I heard it as an Indian story --
about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a
platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested on the
back of a turtle, asked (perhaps he was an ethnographer; it is the way
they behave), what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that
thrtle? "Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down."[1]
He uses it as an example of the pitfalls of his technique of thick
description, both literally to indicate the ways in which ethnographic
detail becomes suspect, and figuratively to illustrate the difficulty
of getting to the bottom of cultural analysis.
Although Geertz appears to be vectoring it, the surrounding text treats
it as fiction, as a canonical example or even an ethnographer joke.
-Rich "there, all cleared up, then" Lafferty
[1] Geertz, Clifford. "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory
of Culture" in _The Interpretation of Cultures_. New York: Basic
Books. 28-29.
D. A. Kelly
sometimes Bertrand Russell) and an eccentric little old lady at a
lecture. The setting was generally unspecified, but the implication was
always that it was Boston or London, rather than a remote tribal village.
Cambias
David LeReverend
In the version I heard, it was at a university lecture (on astronomy?) in
England, after a new policy had been introduced that allowed the general
puplic to audit courses if they so wished (the "open" university, I think it
was called". The afore-mentioned EOL interrupted the lecture to offer her
version of cosmology:
EOL: "You scientists think you're so smart, but you don't know nothin'.
Everybody knows the earth is on the back of a giant turtle".
Scientist: "And upon what, dear lady, does the turtle stand?"
EOL: "You scientists don't know nothin'. It's turtles all the way down!"
David "Perhaps Better When It Was Closed" LeReverend
Lee Rudolph
>I've also seen this one vectored as an exchange between William James (or
>sometimes Bertrand Russell) and an eccentric little old lady at a
>lecture. The setting was generally unspecified, but the implication was
>always that it was Boston or London, rather than a remote tribal village.
^^^^^^^^^^^
You mis-expanded "i.e."
Lee "if larks and owls crossbred at the hub of the universe,
would the cabbits speak only to the lowls?" Rudolph
D.M.Procida
> In the version I heard, it was at a university lecture (on astronomy?) in
> England, after a new policy had been introduced that allowed the general
> puplic to audit courses if they so wished (the "open" university, I think it
> was called".
I don't know what it was but it wasn't the Open University. The Open
University is a university. If you've seen the (very poor) film or stage
play _Educating Rita_ you'll have an idea how it works. Somebody with
more time can explain it all perhaps. The OU has a small but well-formed
body of folklore all of its own, chiefly concerning the brief but
furious sexual activities which feature at its summer schools.
> EOL: "You scientists think you're so smart, but you don't know nothin'.
^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> EOL: "You scientists don't know nothin'. It's turtles all the way down!"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Is this supposed to be an English little old lady? She sure talks mighty
strange!
Daniele
--
"...the so-called support act, The Awkward Moments, climbed onstage
unsmilingly, not even looking at the audience. They only played one
song: "Autobahn". In German. For twenty minutes. Then they swaggered
off, not once having acknowledged the crowd. Conceited arrogant swine."
David LeReverend
> David LeReverend <dlere...@nospam.irispower.com> wrote:
You accidentally left out:
D. A. Kelly wrote:
> eccentric little old lady
> > EOL: "You scientists think you're so smart, but you don't know nothin'.
> > EOL: "You scientists don't know nothin'. It's turtles all the way down!"
> Is this supposed to be an English little old lady?
I left out the "little". I guess 'cause in my version ....
> she sure talks mighty
David "Never been to England, but I've bean to Boston" LeReverend
Gadi Guy
>
> D. A. Kelly wrote:
>
> > I've also seen this one vectored as an exchange between William James (or
> > sometimes Bertrand Russell) and an eccentric little old lady at a
> > lecture. The setting was generally unspecified, but the implication was
> > always that it was Boston or London, rather than a remote tribal village.
> >
>
> In the version I heard, it was at a university lecture (on astronomy?) in
> England, after a new policy had been introduced that allowed the general
> puplic to audit courses if they so wished (the "open" university, I think it
> version of cosmology:
I was always positive this was "reported" by Harlan Ellison
(in "To See", maybe?).
He is a great author of fiction, and as such he is very flexible
with his perception of reality: sometimes confusing things that
really happened with things that (wouldn't it be amusing if...)
they really happened.
An example: Harlan Ellison wrote in his forward to a Philip K. Dick
book (was it "The Man in the High Castle"?) that the book was
written under the influence of LSD. Philip Dick was embittered by
the stigma (of a drug user) that stuck to him from then on, and accused
Ellison of "...inventing that ridiculous story just to make an extra
buck!" (a free quote).
--
Gadi Guy
------------------------------------------------------------
youlovedmeasaloserbutnowyoureworriedthatijustmightwinyouknow
thewaytostopmebutyoudonthavethedisciplinehowmanynightsipraye
dforthistoletmyworkbeginfirstwetakemanhattanthenwetakeberlin
------------------------------------------------------------
Charles William Dimmick
>D. A. Kelly wrote:
>> I've also seen this one vectored as an exchange between William James (or
>> sometimes Bertrand Russell) and an eccentric little old lady at a
>> lecture.
>in Hawking's "A Brief History of Time".
I came across a version (must have read it before 1960) in which the
lecturer was Thomas Huxley. Thomas Huxley gave a large number
of public lectures in the late 19th century, in an attempt to spread
scientific knowledge among the general public.
I'm almost certain that I also read this story in Reader's Digest at
one time, but I've just been through my collection of RD
anecdotes and can't find it.
Charles
Drew McMichael
: The Bertrand Russell vs. an eccentric little old lady version is presented
: in Hawking's "A Brief History of Time".
Well, Hawking opens the story with "A well-known scientist (some say
it was Betrand Russell) once gave a lecture . . . "
So, he does hedge the vector a bit.
Andrew
Daniel.
>
> D. A. Kelly wrote:
> > I've also seen this one vectored as an exchange between William James (or
> > lecture. The setting was generally unspecified, but the implication was
> > always that it was Boston or London, rather than a remote tribal village.
>
> in Hawking's "A Brief History of Time".
Russell gives a different account of a post-lecture confrontation with a
little old lady. This is somewhere in "Unpopular Essays" as I recall. He said,
roughly, that when he would lecture on China there would always be one old
lady who would appear to be sleeping throughout the lecture and at the end
would ask with a bit of asperity why he had omitted to mention that the
Chinese, being heathens, could of course have no virtues. If anyone has the
book handy he/she can correct my recollection, but this seems like a potential
source for the basic scenario involved...
-Daniel.
--
Idealist: "What is the principal thing for which men sell their souls?" |
Cynic: "The privilege of being unaware that they have sold them." |
Idealist: "What!" |
Cynic: "Sad, isn't it..." |
Linda Lawson
>On Fri, 28 Aug 1998 bd....@gtn.net (Bill Donovan) wrote:
>>D. A. Kelly wrote:
>>> I've also seen this one vectored as an exchange between William James (or
>>> sometimes Bertrand Russell) and an eccentric little old lady at a
>>> lecture.
>>in Hawking's "A Brief History of Time".
>
The backcover of "The Book of Turtles", 1977, Running Press has this
quoted from Bernard Nietschmann, "Natural History", June-July 1974 --
<begin quote>
After delivering a lecture on the solar system,
philosopher/psychologistt William James was approached by an elderly
lady who claimed she had a theory superior to the one described by
him.
"We don't live on a ball rotating around the sun," she said. "We live
on a crust of earth on the back of a giant turtle."
Not wishing to demolish this absurd argument with the massive
scientific evidence at his command, James decided to dissuade his
opponent gently.
"If your theory is correct, madam, what does this turtle stand on?"
"You're a very clever man, Mr. James, and that's a good question, but
I can answer that. The first turtle stands on the back of a second,
far larger turtle."
"But what does the second turtle stand on?" James asked patiently.
The old lady crowed triumpantly, "It's no use, Mr. James - it's
turtles all the way down."
<end quote>
Next time I visit my library-in-storage I will look up that issue of
"Natural History" to see if Nietschmann cites his source for the tale.
A couple other old beliefs-
After the creation of the universe, turtles were given the
responsibility to help mankind, pursue truth, and bear the weary
burdens of the world.
Turtles were believed to all be females, and that they reproduced by
copulating with snakes. [Following this mention, author Mr. Nicholls
sez "I am at a loss to explain the origins of this belief"]
--
Linda "faux chelonians mock turtle necks" Lawson