“The essential point about the turtle is its role as as a transitional object. That is transitional between the body, the self and abstract mathematical ideas. The turtle, you can identify with it. You can move your body in order to guess how to command the turtle, so it’s related to you, to the body, to the human and it’s also related to mathematical ideas because the structure is such that it captures some extremely powerful geometric and physical ideas.”
Papert, S. (1983) In the BBC documentary, “Talking Turtle.” Accessed February 20, 2012 here. (4:53)