I don’t want to be taken for a curmudgeon. I love things that seem magical, I love to be amazed by illusions, but I’m annoyed by magical thinking. After the Plato Code, I’m more than usually primed to pull back the curtains. The “magic trick” attributed to Albertus Magnus by William Kalush, founder of the Conjuring Arts Research Center, is an interesting bit of the history of magic and magicians, but don’t you wonder how it works? Isn’t it also a kind of experiment—part of the history of science?
By fotogranina
The trick was this: if you hold a fly under water it will drown, but if you then bury it in ashes, it will come back to life. Nice trick if you want to handle a fly, plus it has a little Christological twist. How does it work, though?
