A Middle Aged Dispute Medieval scholars have a reputation for disputation on the most abstract and rarefied of theological questions, the “how many angels can dance of the head of a pin” problem.  Of course, this is now a byword for particularly pointless, time-wasting debates. Modern investors have their own equivalent conundrums, such as “does market growth come from dividends or capital growth?”  Just like its Middle Ages counterparts it turns out that the answer is neither obvious nor unimportant.  Dividend Fallacies Although it’s true that medieval philosophers delighted in debating abstruse theological questions, the angels-pinhead problem wasn’t one of them.  This was invented far later as a means of poking fun at the whole, peculiar process.  Strange questions such as “can a bishop who is raised from the dead return to his office?” weren’t practically useful but they did teach generations of scholars how to reason logically, and helped...