To the question, "Where are you in this moment?" a pilot would answer, "At longitude x, latitude y, altitude z." But if one asks, "Where do you live?", the answer may instead evoke neighborly relations weaved through the years, a climate, old stones, the freshness of water. Depending on who is asked about what, the where question can be answered by space determinations or by the memories of a concrete place. Space and place are two different ways of conceiving the "where" or, using the Latin word for "where" as a terminus technicus, two answers to the ubi question.

Place and Space

Place is an order of beings vis-à-vis the body. This order (kosmos in Greek) always mirrors the great cosmos. This vis-à-vis or mirroring is the essence of what has been called proportionality (Illich and Rieger 1996). According to Albert Einstein, the concept of space disembedded...