Recursive Calls

Sometimes, in order to execute a SQL statement issued by a user, Oracle must issue additional statements. Such statements are called recursive calls or recursive SQL statements. For example, if you insert a row into a table that does not have enough space to hold that row, then Oracle makes recursive calls to allocate the space dynamically. Recursive calls are also generated when data dictionary information is not available in the data dictionary cache and must be retrieved from disk.

Oracle accesses blocks in one of two modes, current or consistent.
db block gets
A 'db block get' is a current mode get. That is, it's the most up-to-date
copy of the data in that block, as it is right now, or currently. There
can only be one current copy of a block in the buffer cache at any time.
Db block gets generally are used when DML changes data in the database.
In that case, row-level locks are implicitly taken on the updated rows.
There is also at least one well-known case where a select statement does
a db block get, and does not take a lock. That is, when it does a full
table scan or fast full index scan, Oracle will read the segment header
in current mode (multiple times, the number varies based on Oracle version).
consistent gets
A 'consistent get' is when Oracle gets the data in a block which is consistent with a given point in time, or SCN. The consistent get is at the heart of Oracle's read consistency mechanism. When blocks are fetched in order to satisfy a query result set, they are fetched in consistent mode. If no block in the buffer cache is consistent to the correct point in time, Oracle will (attempt to) reconstruct that block using the information in the rollback segments. If it fails to do so, that's when a query errors out with the much dreaded, much feared, and much misunderstood ORA-1555 "snapshot too old".

physical reads
With Oracle, physical reads do not necessarily indicate disk reads; physical reads may well be satisfied from the file system cache.

Reference:
1、
Oracle® Database
Performance Tuning Guide
10g Release 1 (10.1)
Part No. B10752-01

2、
http://www.orafaq.com/maillist/oracle-l/2003/12/18/1452.htm