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

The question "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" has been used many times as a dismissal of medieval angelology in particular, and of scholasticism in general. The phrase has been used also to criticize figures such as Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, who explored the intersection between the philosophical aspects of space and the qualities attributed to angels. Another variety of the question is: "How many angels can stand on the point of a pin?"

Scholasticism used these kind of questions in dialectical reasoning to extend knowledge by inference, and to resolve contradictions. The need for rationality as complementary to faith was raised as an important point for Catholic theology at the Council of Trent. The question has also been linked to the fall of Constantinople, with the imagery of scholars debating about minutiae while the Turkish besieged the city. In modern usage, it therefore has been used as a metaphor for wasting time debating topics of no practical value, or questions whose answers hold no intellectual consequence, while more urgent concerns pile up.

Origin

The fact that certain renowned medieval scholars considered similar questions is clear; Aquinas's Summa Theologica, written c. 1270, includes discussion of several questions regarding angels such as, "Can several angels be in the same place?" However the idea that such questions had a prominent place in medieval scholarship has been debated, and it has not been proved that this particular question was ever disputed. One theory is that it is an early modern fabrication, as 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 17th-century reference in William Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants (1637), where he accuses unnamed scholastics of debating "whether a Million of Angels may not fit upon a Needle's point?" This is earlier than a reference in the 1678 The True Intellectual System Of The Universe by Ralph Cudworth. HS 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 early 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?".

Philosopher George MacDonald Ross has identified a close parallel in a 14th-century mystical text, the Swester Katrei. Other possibilities are that it is a surviving parody or self-parody, or a training topic in debating.

In Spanish, the conundrum of useless scholarly debates is linked to a similar question of whether or not angels are genderless.

Suggested answers

Dorothy L. Sayers argued that the question was "simply a debating exercise" and that the answer "usually adjudged correct" was stated as, "Angels are pure intelligences, not material, but limited, so that they have location in space, but not extension." Sayers compares the question to that of how many people's thoughts can be concentrated upon a particular pin at the same time. She concludes that infinitely many angels can be located on the head of a pin, since they do not occupy any space there:

The practical lesson to be drawn from the argument is not to use words like "there" in a loose, unscientific way, without specifying whether you mean "located there" or "occupying space there."

Humoristic answers

In the humoristic magazine Annals of Improbable Research, Anders Sandberg has presented a calculation based on theories of information physics and quantum gravity, establishing an upper bound of 8.6766×10⁴⁹ angels.

The comic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal poses an answer derived from physics to this question, i.e. between one and 30 vigintillion angels.

In the fifth season of the science-fiction series Babylon 5, the recurring character Byron Gordon, in a conversation about a rebellion among Human Telepaths against a despotic government both asked and answered the question with a confident but cryptic "As many as are needed." Thus suggesting the specific number of angels is irrelevant, it is the existence of angels, (and by way of analogy the Telepaths and allies that follow of the message of freedom and peace against tyranny) that is important.

In the satirical novel Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, the angel Aziraphale is said to be the only angel who could dance on the head of a pin, as he learned the gavotte in the 19th century. Also in Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett Granny Weatherwax says the answer is 16 if it's an ordinary house pin.

In other contexts

Comparing mediæval superstition and modern science, George Bernard Shaw wrote in the introduction to the play Saint Joan that "The medieval doctors of divinity who did not pretend to settle how many angels could dance on the point of a needle cut a very poor figure as far as romantic credulity is concerned beside the modern physicists who have settled to the billionth of a millimetre every movement and position in the dance of the electrons."

See also

• Argumentation theory
• Balloon debate
• Philosophy of copyright, for a modern take of a scholastic problem
• Discourse
• Pedantry

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. & Bergmans, L. (eds.), Mathematics and the Divine: a historical study, Ch. 14 by Edith Sylla (review)

External links

• "Did medieval scholars argue over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin?" – article at The Straight Dope.