<P> The question "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" (alternatively "How many angels can stand on the point of a pin?") is a reductio ad absurdum of medieval scholasticism in general, and its angelology in particular, as represented by figures such as Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas . It is first recorded in the 17th century, in the context of Protestant apologetics . 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 . </P> <P> 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): </P>

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