What is possible and impossible is a social fact.

Carlos Eire's Yale book talk for They Flew: A History of the Impossible makes this case.

The point is not that the reports of saints literally flying in antiquity were correct.

The point is that what we believe is possible and impossible is a contingent, socially constructed fact based on the dominant paradigm.

Not all impossible things are actually possible.

But some things believed to be impossible within the current paradigm actually turn out to be possible.