They Flew
An award-winning historian's examination of impossible events at the dawn of modernity and of their enduring significance "Historically rich and superbly written."--David J. Davis, Wall Street Journal Shortlisted for the International Society for Science and Religion Book Prize Accounts of seemingly impossible phenomena abounded in the early modern era--tales of levitation, bilocation, and witchcraft--even as skepticism, atheism, and empirical science were starting to supplant religious belief in the paranormal. In this book, Carlos M. N. Eire explores how a culture increasingly devoted to scientific thinking grappled with events deemed impossible by its leading intellectuals. Eire observes