Todd Archer wrote:
>
>
> What, you mean the original stuff practiced in the Middle Ages ("How many
> angels can dance on the head of a pin?")
Jacques Maritain (20th century) argued that whoever had not thought about the Angels (i.e., had not thought about the difference between the angelic and the human intellect) had not thought deeply about metaphysics. The question about how many angels could dance on the point of a needle was a donnish joke about a serious subject: were angels material or immaterial. If the former, than the number that could dance on a needle was finite; if the latter, then the number was infinite. It is also a joke about the difference between physical and spiritual substances, and thus a joke about the very nature of reality, (Incidentally, the joke was probably of post-medieval composition: it is doubtful that it was ever used in Scholastic disputation about angels.)
Another instance of the ahistoricity of common sense superiority to the intellectuals.
Carrol