Re: HVAC questions

[Bernard Cleyet <anngeorg@PACBELL.NET>]

:That story is, in that invaluable phrase from _The Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy_, a load of dingoes' kidneys.  It is like the
spurious claim that a church council debated whether women have
souls that appeared recently in another newsgroup.

Sir Arnold Lunn, in the notes to his 1950 book, _The Revolt Against
Reason_, reports that when he tried to track down the origin of
the story he was referred to an article by Father James Broderick,
S.J., in _The Tablet_ of October 10th, 1942.  He quotes from
Fr. Broderick:

     "In 1890, _Notes and Queries_, that national chastener of all
who Talk at Random, resumed earlier inquiries into the history of
the conceit, and managed to trace angels and needles back to the
year 1638, when William Chillingworth published his famous _Religion
of Protestants_.  A Jesuit had cast aspersions on the learning of
Anglican divines, which rankled with Willian because he was of that
fraternity himself, though somewhat shaky on the point of Sabbatical
worship.  He retorted scornfully that men might be learned even though
they 'dispute not eternally . . . whether a million of angels may
not sit upon a needle's point.'  Despite the new position of the angels,
this is plainly the same old story.  Chillingworth links it with the
really clever and amusing _Chimera bombinans in vacuo_, and certainly
the two conceits had a similar origin, not in the speculations of any
Catholic theologian, but in the brain of some smart humanist or reformer
who wanted to make scholasticism look ridiculous.  It was the same
ingenious propagandists who succeeded in converting the venerated name
of Duns Scotus, 'of reality the rarest-veined unraveller,' into a
synonym for a blockhead."

Lunn comments: "The angel-needle thesis, if in fact it was ever debated,
was almost certainly a debating exercise to sharpen the wits of pupils.
Angels, it was believed, were pure intelligences not material, but
limited, so they could have location in space but not extension; rather
like a point which in theory has position but no magnitude.  Thus an
angel could not _occupy_ space--i.e. a needle point--but could be
_located on_ a needle point."

-------
Marty Helgesen
Bitnet: mnhcc@cunyvm   Internet: mnhcc@cunyvm.cuny.edu

"What if there were no such thing as a hypothetical situation?"

http://geneva.rutgers.edu/src/faq/angels-dancing.txt

read also:

http://www.isacat.net/citnames/2001/misc/angels.htm

Note the belief it was a debating exercise, not taken seriously.

bc



Herbert H Gottlieb wrote:

> This HVAC question reminds me of the debates that may
> have occurred during the middle ages concerning
> the number of angels that could stand on on a pinhead
> at the same time. Does anyone recall the consensus
> number that the majority accepted?
>
> Herb Gottlieb from New York City
> (Where the PRESSURE to raise our taxes is steadily increasing)
>
> On Mon, 02 Dec 2002 10:17:35 -0500 Bob LaMontagne
> <rlamont@POSTOFFICE.PROVIDENCE.EDU> writes:
> > John Barrer wrote:
> >
> > > You can also (more "profitably"??) express pressure as
> > > energy per unit volume; this disconnects the concept
> > > from a "surface-only" phenomenon. John Barrere
> > > --- cliff parker <cparker@CHARTER.NET> wrote:
> >
> > Two concepts of pressure have been brought up so far - energy per
> > unit volume (quoted
> > above) and momentum flow (John Denker).
> >
> > For an ideal gas, PV = 2/3 N <Ave Kinetic Energy of the individual
> > molecules>.
> >
> > If we take the energy per unit volume approach, and then look at the
> > product PV, it
> > seems we have an excess of energy over the simple KE of the
> > molecules. What is this
> > excess energy?
> >
> > The momentum flow approach doesn't seem to have this difficulty.
> >
> > Bob at PC