How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? dancing on a needle's point occurs in an expository work by the English divine, William Sclater (1575-1626). In "An exposition with notes vpon the first Epistle to the Thessalonians" (1619), Sclater claimed that scholastic philosophers occupied themselves with such pointless questions as whether angels "did occupie a place; and so, whether many might be in one place at one time; and how many might sit on a Needles point; and six hundred such like needlesse points." Harrison proposes that the reason an English writer first introduced the "needle’s point" into a critique of medieval angelology is that it makes for
At Home: A Short History of Private Life home, but a venue for Bryson to present each of a series of historical events as a "well-turned story, a mildly humorous aside, a colourful anecdote". Historian Judith Flanders said that "occasionally the book seems to have better jokes than it does a sense of history" but still called the book a "treasure". Another reviewer noted that one with "any interest in furniture, food, fashion, architecture, energy or world history ... (will have) stumbled across some (or all) of the information Bryson has on offer (because) countless books have been written on every subject covered in "At Home"; many are