Turtles All the Way Down
Infinite Regress · Unmoved Mover
An expression of the problem of needing something to explain something to explain something, etc., where the expression alludes to the mythological idea of a World Turtle that supports the earth on its back, and then the question being asked of what supports *that* turtle.
Origin
The earliest known printed version appeared in an 1838 issue of the New-York Mirror. William James retold the story in an 1882 lecture, describing a woman who insisted the Earth rests on a turtle, which stands on another turtle, and so on "all the way down." The image draws on ancient world turtle mythology found in Hindu, Chinese, and Indigenous American cosmologies. It has since become a standard shorthand for infinite regress in philosophy and popular culture.