They Flew: A History of the Impossible

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 talk, based on his recent book of the same title, Carlos Eire explores how a culture increasingly devoted to scientific thinking grappled with events deemed impossible by its leading intellectuals.