They Flew: A History of the Impossible

by: Carlos M. N. Eire (Author)

Publisher: Yale University Press

Publication Date: 2023/9/26

Language: English

Print Length: 512 pages

ISBN-10: 0300259808

ISBN-13: 9780300259803

Book Description

An award-winning historian’s examination of impossible events at the dawn of modeity and of their enduring significance   “Historically rich and superbly written.”—David J. Davis, Wall Street Joual   Accounts of seemingly impossible phenomena abounded in the early mode 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 how levitating saints and flying witches were as essential a component of early mode life as the religious turmoil of the age, and as much a part of history as Newton’s scientific discoveries. Relying on an array of firsthand accounts, and focusing on exceptionally impossible cases involving levitation, bilocation, witchcraft, and demonic possession, Eire challenges established assumptions about the redrawing of boundaries between the natural and supeatural that marked the transition to modeity.   Using as his case studies stories about St. Teresa of Avila, St. Joseph of Cupertino, the Venerable María de Ágreda, and three disgraced nuns, Eire challenges readers to imagine a world animated by a different understanding of reality and of the supeatural’s relationship with the natural world. The questions he explores—such as why and how “impossibility” is determined by cultural contexts, and whether there is more to reality than meets the eye or can be observed by science—have resonance and lessons for our time.

About the Author

An award-winning historian’s examination of impossible events at the dawn of modeity and of their enduring significance   “Historically rich and superbly written.”—David J. Davis, Wall Street Joual   Accounts of seemingly impossible phenomena abounded in the early mode 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 how levitating saints and flying witches were as essential a component of early mode life as the religious turmoil of the age, and as much a part of history as Newton’s scientific discoveries. Relying on an array of firsthand accounts, and focusing on exceptionally impossible cases involving levitation, bilocation, witchcraft, and demonic possession, Eire challenges established assumptions about the redrawing of boundaries between the natural and supeatural that marked the transition to modeity.   Using as his case studies stories about St. Teresa of Avila, St. Joseph of Cupertino, the Venerable María de Ágreda, and three disgraced nuns, Eire challenges readers to imagine a world animated by a different understanding of reality and of the supeatural’s relationship with the natural world. The questions he explores—such as why and how “impossibility” is determined by cultural contexts, and whether there is more to reality than meets the eye or can be observed by science—have resonance and lessons for our time.