About an hour ago you stopped at Roush's and
picked up Kim then drove up to Schneider's for milk and cream-filled doughnuts.
Presently you are on your to be road, McAlister looking at your house but with
a different plan (a third bedroom rather than study). - Amorella
1111 hours. I like it. Ours will be more of a mirror copy. The house is
larger on the inside than it looks on
the outside. Another house to the left had a basement being put in last time,
today it is nearly framed on the outside. It is exciting to see a conceptual
plan mold into a material three-dimensional space. This place also has four
feet added to the garage which appears huge compared to our own on Hidden
Creek. The lots are small no question about it and this yard will not be flat,
I'm glad we found a flat lot with an open back view. Back in our younger days
there were a lot of homes this size. This would easily support two adults and
three kids, though two would have to share a room growing up. My sisters shared
a room in our parents' house on Minerva Lake Road. I had a small room by
myself, about the size of some walk in closets today, but it was fine. Cathy
and Gretchen had twins and I had a stacked bunk bed. We never thought anything
about it. Today people want each kid to have her or his own room. Nothing wrong
with that, but our generation hadn't been brought up on those terms. We didn't
know any better. We had a toilet in the basement too, a spare. Not everybody
had a spare; it was enclosed with a shower curtain for a bit, though not much
privacy. It was far better than Auntie and Uncle Doc's outhouse, especially in
Winter and we had toilet paper not an old newspaper or Sears catalogue. Here
they come. (1129)
1141
hours. We moved to the lot and I took a photo. I really like the expanse to the
outer trees and northern sky, but there is a drawback. If you have windows open
you will hear traffic on I-71 which is about two hundred yards away. We are up
about seventy feet from it which helps. It just passing through traffic though,
no congestion with light and corners as in an urban area. Most of the time in
Summer and Winter the windows will be closed anyway.
Afternoon. You had a good trip returning
home and are at Kroger's near the Mason I-71 exit for skim milk and bananas.
You both enjoyed a lunch with Paul and Kim at pizza in Dublin before checking
out the house that is very much like yours being built at a Dublin M/I. -
Amorella
1644 hours. We were positively surprised. The rooms are bigger than we
thought. The upstairs bedroom/extra room has a full bath plus a five foot by
eight foot walk in closet, plus the room itself has three large bedroom windows
facing east just like ours will have. It is larger than we suspected it would
be. In fact the whole house looks larger because of the more massive roofline
with the basically a story and a half. We are quite pleased with the look even
though it is only a stick house on the inside with a plastic outer cover on the
outer walls.
Getting time for bed. You had raw carrots
and dip as well as half a peanut butter and raisin on a piece of wheat bread
for supper. Carol had left overs. You watched NBC News and Tuesday's
"NCIS" as well as a fairly recent "Blue Bloods" for
entertainment. Carol is upstairs reading but you plan on listening to one of
your Pandora stations with headphones before sleep. - Amorella
2106 hours. It is too early to go to sleep, but it has been both a fun
and tiring day -- well worth our drive up this morning. I'm sure we'll visit
that Dublin house again the next time we go to Kim and Paul's.
Bored in the moment you
decided to kick up a philosophical question from Wikipedia when you came upon this
article:
** **
How many angels
can dance on the head of a pin?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 Turks 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…
Philosopher
and historian Peter Harrison has
suggested that the first reference to angels dancing on a needle's point occurs
in an expository work by the English divine, William Sclater (1575-1626). In An exposition with notes vpon the
first Epistle to the Thessalonians (1619),
Sclater claimed that scholastic philosophers occupied themselves with such
pointless questions as whether angels "did occupie a place; and so,
whether many might be in one place at one time; and how many might sit on a
Needles point; and six hundred such like needlesse points." Harrison
proposes that the reason an English writer first introduced the "needle’s
point" into a critique of medieval angelology is that it makes for a
clever pun on "needless point".
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 Italian, Spanish
and Portuguese, the conundrum of useless scholarly debates is linked to a
similar question of whether angels are genderless or have sex. Spanish jurist Jose Antonio Ramirez
Lopez said about the story of the
Byzantine empire: "Everybody
knows the idiotic and sometimes bloody discussions in that Empire on the sex of
angels, about how many could perch at the same time on the head of a pin".
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.
The comic "Dilbert" lets the character Dogbert share the final answer. It's six.
In the
seventh episode of 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 want to." 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 his novel
Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins suggests: "Philosophers have
argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but
materalists have known all along that it depends on whether they are
jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek".
In
other contexts
Comparing
medieval 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."
Selected
and edited from Wikipedia
** **
2220
hours. I like Harrison's pun, 'needless point'.
You do not entertain a present philosophical
discussion on either the point or the number of angels? - Amorella
2223 hours. It is a waste of time, no one can know if angels really
exist let alone how an angelic spirit can make itself known to humankind in
either space or time. I just chose the article because it is a fun piece of
writing.
Yet, if an angel were so, you cannot deny
that I may be one of many. - Amorella
2227 hours. You, the Amorella, in my heartansoulanmind, may be an angel
but it is within a thoughtful concept not space or time.
So, you would argue an angel or many angels
may dance in the thoughtful concept but not on the point of a needle? -
Amorella
2231 hours. Even here, in a concept, it is but an analogy. Dancing
exacts motion. Where is the motion with the body of physics? It is but a dreamy
notion of motion. You are toying with me Amorella.
Just for fun, orndorff. Post then go to bed.
- Amorella
2235 hours. Ah, who is for fun, Amorella, angels or Homo sapiens?
You are arrogant and without remorse, boy. -
Amorella
2237 hours. It is in my nature at the strangest times, Amorella. I
cannot deny my arrogance and really my lack of remorse. My humanity kicked it.
In all honesty I cannot take it back because it was a real thought in said
context. I cannot ask for forgiveness for what is a reality of my inner
character. To respectfully quote Martin Luther: "Here I stand, I can do no
other."
'Said' completely without mocking? - Amorella
2246 hours. And without defiance. A self-truth is what it is.
Post without regret. - Amorella
2247 hours. Why would I regret my humanity?
You are indeed arrogant and defiant. -
Amorella
2249 hours. It is without intent and within spiritual circumstance.
Are you done, young man? - Amorella
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