Before Shabbat

In his extraordinary book, A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking tells this story:  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!”

I’ve loved this story since I first read it some 35 years ago. For a long time, I didn’t even know why I liked it so much. I just felt it speaking to me. I didn’t absorb it as a simple tale of two diametrically opposed takes on reality. Instead, I perceived it almost like a Buddhist koan, hiding deep truth in plain sight.

The wisdom of this little story recently emerged in a satori moment. I overheard a preschool child engaged in a discussion with a teacher. It went something like this: Why can’t we go outside today? Because it’s too cold. Why is it too cold? The clouds are covering the sun. Why are the clouds… Ahh, hah! It hit me! Turtles all the way down…

When we want to find out the real truth, we sometimes refer to it as getting to the bottom of the issue. Only what happens if there is no bottom? What if it all doesn’t work out so simply, so neatly? What if it’s turtles all the way down?

Perfection is a philosophical system, not a human state of being. We live with extraordinary complexity in everything from how our brains work to the electric grid to how a violin vibrates to… well, fill in the blanks of your own life.

There could be a fundamental limit to how far matter can be divided, a truly elementary particle or state that cannot be broken down further. We’ve repeatedly discovered smaller constituents when we thought we’d found the bottom layer, so physicists remain open to the possibility of yet undiscovered substructure. While some theories suggest a limit – quarks, strings, or quantum foam – history teaches us humility about claiming we’ve reached the bottom. It may just be turtles all the way down.

As I’ve learned now, Hawking’s story is an example par excellence of infinite regression theory. It essentially poses this point: some questions have no ultimate answers. Is there a God or not? Will the Universe continue to expand? Is there a significant probability, as Nick Bostrom argues, that we’re living in a simulation created by advanced civilizations? Turtles all the way down.

This perspective offers profound healing. Beauty lies not in reaching some ultimate truth but in the endless unfolding of mysteries. Like the old lady’s turtles, there’s wonder and wisdom in accepting that some things go “all the way down.”

This fact of existence is a healing thing. At the end of the day, it’s okay not to know it all; in fact, we can’t know it all! It teaches us to be gentler with ourselves and others, knowing we cannot fully comprehend everything. There is infinite mystery in a world that is evolving and devolving at the same time. Life is not like the peeling of an onion, which makes us cry and leaves us in the middle with nothing. In embracing this infinite regression, we find not emptiness but richness – an endless cascade of questions and possibilities that make life worth exploring. It’s turtles all the way down, and that is beautiful.