#INFINTE REGRESS SERIES#

Like the old woman in the story who described the world as resting on a rock, and then explained that rock to be supported by another rock, and finally when pushed with questions said it was 'rocks all the way down,' he who believes this to be a radically moral universe must hold the moral order to rest either on an absolute and ultimate should or on a series of shoulds 'all the way down.'

James referred to the fable of the elephant and tortoise several times, but told the infinite regress story with 'rocks all the way down' in his 1882 essay, 'Rationality, Activity and Faith':

Many 20th-century attributions claim that philosopher and psychologist William James is the source of the phrase. Barker, too, there are tortoises all the way down. My opponent's reasoning reminds me of the heathen, who, being asked on what the world stood, replied, 'On a tortoise.' But on what does the tortoise stand? 'On another tortoise.' With Mr. 'Lud! child, how stupid you are! There's rocks all the way down!' Ī version of the saying in its 'turtle' form appeared in an 1854 transcript of remarks by preacher Joseph Frederick Berg addressed to Joseph Barker: 'Standing on a rock! but upon what does that stand?' 'Well, I don't know anything about its axes,' replied she, 'but I know it don't turn round, for if it did we'd be all tumbled off and as to its being round, any one can see it's a square piece of ground, standing on a rock!' 'The world, marm,' said I, anxious to display my acquired knowledge, 'is not exactly round, but resembles in shape a flattened orange and it turns on its axis once in twenty-four hours.' In the form of 'rocks all the way down', the saying dates to at least 1838, when it was printed in an unsigned anecdote in the New-York Mirror about a schoolboy and an old woman living in the woods: They are merely banded together as usual, one leaning on another and all together on nothing as the Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and had nothing to put under the tortoise.' Modern form all over the country, but each expresses only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. The story is also referenced by Henry David Thoreau, who writes in his journal entry of : 'Men are making speeches. Locke compares one who would say that properties inhere in 'Substance' to the Indian who said the world was on an elephant which was on a tortoise, 'But being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-back'd Tortoise, replied, something, he knew not what'. Others dissented, and said, that the Earth was borne up by seven Elephants the Elephants' feet stood on Tortoises, and they were borne by they know not what.' Purchas' account is again reflected by John Locke in his 1689 tract An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, where Locke introduces the story as a trope referring to the problem of induction in philosophical debate.

'that the Earth had nine corners, whereby it was borne up by the Heaven. Veiga's account seems to have been received by Samuel Purchas, who has a close paraphrase in his Purchas His Pilgrims (1613/1626), When asked who would fix the body of the tortoise, so that it would not collapse, he said that he did not know. Another disagreeing from these would have the earth supported by seven elephants, and the elephants do not sink down because their feet are fixed on a tortoise. Others hold that the earth has nine corners by which the heavens are supported.

Infinte regress