Moreover, many individuals in our age and in earlier times have been transported from one spot to another through the air; this is a matter confirmed by recurrent testimony among us and among those familiar with it. It is likewise known that fire and the light air, when subjected to a forced motion, can be made to descend, whereas earth and water, though heavy, can be compelled to rise—something everyone observes in ordinary experience.

The second misconception:

Some philosophers—Aristotle and his followers, for example—imagined that the celestial spheres cannot split apart, yet the proof they cite is extremely weak. They say: “If the spheres could be rent, then the boundary that confines and moves them would itself have to move in a straight (rectilinear) line; but straight motion requires a void outside the universe, and no such void exists.”

This argument is unsound for several reasons:

First, it pertains only to the highest sphere, not to the ones beneath it, such as the lunar sphere and the like—a point raised against them by Fakhr al-Din al-Razi and others.

Second, the very existence of bodies outside the sphere, just like the existence of the sphere within its own domain, would require a void; to deny a void outside it is no different from denying a void within