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prompter
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
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fb898d70-25b7-4700-b25e-ac3819040084
assistant
While this question was asked by Thomas Aquinas to mock questions he thought were waste of time as a *reductio ad absurdum* challenge, the serious answer for this question would be that there is no answer: angels, in all writings, are described as ethereal beings not constrained by physical boundaries of space, and any solutions attempting to bound them to the region of a pinhead cannot be applied.
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42d9d4ab-3575-4b31-9c9f-6ef8a465812a
prompter
What does "reductio ad absurdum" mean? And what're the synonyms of it?
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75d7775c-d22a-4123-b4e4-f2e6739c3643
assistant
It means "reduction to absurdity" in Latin. It is a type of argument where the assumptions lead to an absurd conclusion, showing that the assumptions are incorrect. Thomas Aquinas is attempting to show that angels do not have physical properties because assuming that angels have physical properties implies that they might fit on a pin head, which is absurd.
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7b47ad4d-64cb-47d4-b926-18bbffce31a5
prompter
Can you give me a brief biography of Thomas Aquinas?