IMSN

At any given point in history, humanity holds on to the best explanation it can muster about how the world works. These explanations—our scientific theories—are built through observation, experimentation, and the interpretation of data. But they are never final. They evolve. They are revised. Sometimes, they are completely overturned.

Science is not a destination—it’s a journey.

Take, for instance, the ancient myth that the world is supported by four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle. It’s a beautiful image, found in Hindu mythology and echoed in various forms in Chinese and Native American traditions. But it raises a problem: what does the turtle stand on?

The answer, according to some tellings, is delightfully paradoxical—“turtles all the way down.”

This phrase has become a shorthand in philosophy to describe infinite regress—a situation where every explanation demands another explanation, endlessly. It reminds us that without a solid foundation, even the most elegant system can spiral into absurdity.

But before we dismiss myths like these as primitive, it’s worth noting that they were honest attempts to answer the same kinds of questions we ask today: What holds up the world? What lies beneath everything we see?

Centuries ago, the prevailing belief in Western science was that Earth was the unmoving center of the universe. Then came Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, who showed us a solar system in motion. Newton explained gravity. Einstein reshaped space and time. Today, quantum theory and dark matter challenge our understanding yet again.

Every era has its “turtle”—its accepted explanation, the idea that seems to make everything else make sense. But every turtle eventually finds its limit. That’s how progress works.

We don’t mock the people who once believed in world-turtles and elephants. They were doing what we’re still doing: looking up at the stars, down at the ground, and asking, “What’s holding all this up?”

Science advances not because we have all the answers, but because we’re willing to keep asking better questions—even when the ground beneath our feet seems to shift.

So next time you hear a theory that feels too strange, too different, or too bold, remember: it’s just the next turtle in the stack. And who knows? It might be the one that finally holds up all the elephants and turtles above!