Can you provide me a reference on this? What theologians? When? In what book or treatise? It never happened. Theologians did debate whether angels were corporeal and Aquinas did take up the question of whether two angels could occupy the same space at the same time, but I can't find any reference to angels dancing on pinheads in the entire scholastic canon.
The pinheads comment was a critique aimed at theologians by people who saw them as bullshitters at best. This was back in the days when the Church had as much or more power than the government, and theologians were seen by many the way corrupt Congressmen are seen today: just perpetuating the power of the Church at the expense of the people. So academics found ways to mock them, with dancing angels and the like.
The first reference I can find to angels and pinheads was Isaac Disraeli (Ben's dad) at a time when the Catholic Church had little if any power in England. Disraeli pere was a dilettante, not an academic.
From a 3 second Google Search ... This debate â about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin â probably never happened. After the Reformation, early modern philosophers and theologians liked to ridicule mediaeval thinkers for engaging in arcane and fantastic speculations instead of looking to the evidence of the real world and drawing rational conclusions from it. They dismissed these earlier systems of thought, metaphorically, as debates about angels dancing on pinheads. Since then, many people have taken the joke literally, and assumed that that's literally what Aquinas and the other mediaevals busied themselves with.
Try the site below site if you are interested in ancient Catholic theology, however my use of the story, true on not was to point out that we could spend many years debating what random means, is the market random and the philosophy of observation vs. empirical testing. Talk is cheap and entertaining but money talks even louder. And a profitable trading system is a good way to make money. IMO, the market is not random, based only on my observation that the systems I've created consistently make a significant profit. The market for all I care could really be a "random non repeating phantasm" to quote Dan Akroyd in the Ghostbusters movie, as long as I make money that's fine with me. Jerry030 http://www.chelationtherapyonline.com/anatomy/p74.htm If you search for the phrase "How Many Angels Can Fit On The Head Of A Pin?" on the web, the great majority of "hits" will treat this as a good example of an extremely foolish question. This is foolishness! The question was vital -- a matter of life and death in the 1200's when St. Thomas Aquinas grappled with this question and others, now seemingly trivial. Aristotle is known, now, simply as a dead Greek. But some 1500 years after his death his philosophy was THE major competition for the Catholic Church. The Symbol Was Considered MORE Important Than That For Which It Stood -- Because At That Time The Common Man Was NOT Considered To Be Capable Of Understanding The Underlying Truth -- So, He Should Accept The Symbol As The Truth! This was exactly the opposite of what Aristotle taught. The Church, in those years, believed in "symbols" and thought that the common man should accept without understanding, what the Church had to say about God and the spirit. God, for the average Catholic resided in the symbol of the crucifix on the wall, or the other ornaments. Aristotle, unknown today by most, taught that God existed and could be understood by man -- that man did NOT have to just accept blindly what the "elders" taught. Socrates taught much the same, but didn't try, as Aristotle did, to put "science" into his spiritual philosophy. God to Aristotle is the first of all substances, the necessary first source of movement who is himself unmoved. God is a being with everlasting life, and perfect blessedness, engaged in never-ending contemplation. [Source]
After the theology debate is done, does anyone have an opinion on the rate of return over the long term that would indicate a trading system has exploited non random patterns in the market. I don't mean to distract from the importance of Catholic theology to all our lives but the title of the thead has something to do with the nature of the market and random behaviour. Jerry030
Do they? In actual trading? Or in backtesting? Somehow I suspect its the latter. I have my doubts about your modeling and trading expertise. In this thread, you swallow Maestro's statistically improbable blathering with credulous naievete. You labor under the belief that your hard disks are clogged with literally gigabytes of source code. You've been on the site for only a few months yet you claim quantitative trading successes that would put Rentec to shame. I just can't bring myself to take you seriously. A credible source, to be sure!
Why do I see "Trends" in Randomly Generated Data? A brilliant thinker once put this out there "We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are" Anais Nin.
Emilio_Lizardo >Do they? In actual trading? Or in backtesting? Somehow I >suspect its the latter." Actually in both. "I have my doubts about your modeling and trading expertise." On what basis? What is your exact expertise in this field? Mine includes consulting with IBM and similar companies on data mining projects in financial services. What is your professional experience? >In this thread, you swallow Maestro's statistically improbable >blathering with credulous naievete. Not at all. I'm the one that keeps suggesting we actually define criteria that would give an objective basis to the discussion beyond what somebody sees in tossing darts. Sadly all the brilliant minds here missed this as a way to move the discussion beyond his subjective perspective. >You labor under the belief that your hard disks are clogged with >literally gigabytes of source code. If you know more about what's on my hard drive than I do, you must have incredible psychic ability! Could you look at your tea leaves and post the exact close of the DJIA for today (prior to the close of course)? >You've been on the site for only a few months yet you claim >quantitative trading successes that would put Rentec to shame. >I just can't bring myself to take you seriously. And what kind of success, if any, do you claim? Jerry030 Both. A credible source, to be sure! [/B][/QUOTE]
Jerry, I guess our collective successes are gauged on the length of time we post on a particular website. Life must not begin until we find, "ET". I'm enjoying your posts.