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From: sean@think.com (Sean Colbath)
Subject: Re: it's turtles all the way down
Message-ID: <1991Apr15.021623.29256@Think.COM>
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Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA
References: <455@txsil.lonestar.org> <1991Apr14.232710.8841@newshost.anu.edu.au> <1991Apr15.002132.29831@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 02:16:23 GMT

In article <1991Apr15.002132.29831@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> akbloom@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Keith Bloom) writes:
>rjm@vulcan.anu.edu.au (Robert J. McArthur) writes:
>
>>Stephen Hawkings, "A Brief History of Time", on one of the first pages.
>>-- 
>An older reference:  Carl Sagan, "Broca's Brain", 1978, ch. 24: Gott 
>and the Turtles. 
>
>Can anyone find an even older one?

Bertrand Russel.  The story went something like this:  Apparently he was
giving a lecture on cosmology somewhere.  A rather elderly woman came up to
him and said (Ann Elk voice here: Eh-hem!) that she thought that the world
rested on the back of a giant turtle.  Russel chided her, and asked her what
that turtle stood on.  Why, on the back of another turtle, of course.  And
that one?  "Oh, you can't fool me, Mr. Russel.  It's turtles all the way
down!"

Sean Colbath
sean@think.com					...harvard!think!sean
"...and now for something completely different..."

--
Sean Colbath
sean@think.com					...harvard!think!sean
"...and now for something completely different..."