Hand (unit) inches for the handsbreadth; Mortimer gives the same, three inches for the Hand's-breadth, and four for the "Handful, or simply, Hand", but adds "The hand among horse-dealers, &c. is four-fingers' breadth, being the fist clenched, whereby the height of a horse is measured", thus equating "hand" with both the palm and the fist. Similarly, Wright's 1831 translation of Buffon mentions "A hand breadth (palmus), the breadth of the four fingers of the hand, or three inches", but the "Encyclopædia Perthensis" of 1816 gives under Palm (4): "A hand, or measure of lengths comprising three inches". Today the hand is used
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? 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." 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 8.6766×10 angels. 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