They Flew: A History of the Impossible
Levitating saints and bilocating friars, taken seriously by a Yale historian rather than explained away.
Carlos Eire examines the well-documented early modern accounts of people who reportedly flew, appeared in two places at once, or otherwise did the impossible, and asks what a historian should do with testimony that cannot be dismissed as fraud and cannot simply be accepted either. He is more interested in the epistemological problem than in settling it.
Recommended by 1 Person
Tyler Cowen
Carlos M.N. Eire, They Flew: A History of the Impossible. Ross Douthat recommended this one to me. It is well done, and worth reading, but I don’t find it shifted my priors on whether “impossible” events might have really happened.
Source · February 2025
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