How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

The question how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? has been used many times as a trite dismissal of medieval angelology in particular, of scholasticism in general, and of particular figures such as Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas.[1] Another variety of the question is How Many Angels Can Sit On The Head Of A Pin? In modern usage, this question serves as a metaphor for wasting time debating topics of no practical value.[2][3]

It is still a matter of discussion whether this precise topic has a historical foundation, in actual writing or disputation from the European Middle Ages. One theory is that it is an early modern fabrication[4], used to discredit scholastic philosophy at a time when it still played a significant role in university education. James Franklin has raised the scholarly issue, and mentions that there is a seventeenth century reference in William Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants.[5], where he accuses unnamed scholastics of debating " Whether a Million of Angels may not fit upon a needles point?" This is earlier than a reference in the 1678 The True Intellectual System Of The Universe by Ralph Cudworth. H.S. Lang, author of Aristotle's Physics and its Medieval Varieties (1992), says (p. 284): "The question of how many angels can dance on the point of a needle, or the head of a pin, is often attributed to 'late medieval writers' ... In point of fact, the question has never been found in this form".

The modern version in English (usually a needle, rather than a pin) dates back at least to Richard Baxter. In his 1667 tract "The Reasons of the Christian Religion," Baxter reviews opinions on the materiality of angels from ancient times, concluding "And Schibler with others, maketh the difference of extension to be this, that Angels can contract their whole substance into one part of space, and therefore have not partes extra partes. Whereupon it is that the Schoolmen have questioned how many Angels may fit upon the point of a Needle?" [6]

Other possibilities are that it is a surviving parody or self-parody, or debating training topic. But George MacDonald Ross[7] identifies a close parallel in a fourteenth century mystical text.

[edit] Further reading

  • Franklin, J. Heads of Pins in: Australian Mathematical Society Gazette, vol. 20, N. 4, 1993.
  • Howard, Philip (1983), Words Fail Me, summary of correspondence in The Times on the matter
  • Kennedy, D.J., "Thomism", in the Catholic Encyclopedia
  • Koetsier T. and Bergmans L. (ed), Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study, Ch.14 by Edith Sylla (review)

[edit] References

  1. ^ "St. Thomas does not discuss the question "How many angels can dance on the point of a needle?" He reminds us that we must not think of angels as if they were corporeal, and that, for an angel, it makes no difference whether the sphere of his activity be the point of a needle or a continent (Q. lii, a.2)." D.J. Kennedy op cit.)
  2. ^ "Supernatural: On the Head of a Pin". SF Universe (B5Media: Entertainment Channel). 27 Feb 2009. http://www.sfuniverse.com/2009/02/27/supernatural-on-the-head-of-a-pin/. Retrieved 2009-03-15. 
  3. ^ E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil, ed (2002). The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (Third ed.). Houghton Mifflin Co. http://www.bartleby.com/59/4/howmanyangel.html. 
  4. ^ More precisely, in play in the seventeenth century, and discussed at various levels by the Cambridge Platonists Cudworth and Henry More, and Leibniz.
  5. ^ Franklin 1993 p. 127.
  6. ^ Richard Baxter, p530 of The Reasons of the Christian Religion, 1667.
  7. ^ G. MacDonald Ross, Angels in: Philosophy, vol. 60, 1985, pp. 499–515.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_the_head_of_a_pin%3F"
Languages