The concept of educating city is based on the evidence that space is not neutral, but rather generates, disseminates, and reinforces images and values in an explicit and implicit way. This communicative character is more intense the more complex, diverse, and richer the reference space is.

Oases are what they are, but the desert around them makes us perceive them as lavish. We live in a universe of mental oases and we do not give things the value they have, but the value we would like them to have.

The miasmas – a frightening name concealing a solid lack of knowledge – were supposed vapours carrying particles of «corrupted matter» that caused infectious diseases.

In late-Middle-Age Central European monasteries, nuns like Hildegard von Bingen rivaled monks in intellectual excellence.

We do not know what the science of future will bring, but we can assess that the mythical creation of Zarathustra survives.

Sentences string words together to express universes of related concepts. That is why it is so important to always use the right term to evoke the concept clearly and accurately.

In the eighteenth century, the metre, its multiples and decimal submultiples cornered the cumbersome use of sexagesimal systems, still valid until then.

Els piroclasts són fragments sòlids de roques volcàniques expulsats per la columna eruptiva. Els més lleugers poden arribar a milers de metres d’altura.

Migrating time after time, we reached every corner of the world. Slowly at first. Then, with the invention of boats, quite fast. Today, thanks to motorised vehicles, at great speed. We are the most migratory species in the world.

The work of economists, which is so important, is ascribed to the field of human decisions. These are emotional and, therefore, irreducible to the scientific method.

Religion is usually a rational attempt to explain the incomprehensible. A rational one, based on available information, naturally. Of course, most religions are very old, so their rationalist effort seems

Without growth there is no progress, but without a supporting system (a lift force), it collapses. We need the new Wright brothers of economy. Urgently, I think.

Lucretian inductions, Galilean evidence or Darwinian deductions were attacks against mental laziness, which is more powerful than any dogma can be. Ideological reasons do not explain human resistance to change. Basically, they tend to sloth.

The World Wide Web does not increase polymathy instrumentally. The Internet rather discourages it. Actually, the Internet generation and the library generation have more than a generational conflict. They stage a cultural rupture.

Condorcet was a very remarkable man, who led the French revolutionary thought while it actually lasted, that is, while it subverted outdated ideas and the prevailing reactionary status quo.

At least in villages,our great-grandparents lived almost as the Romans. To reach their standard of living, it took the whole history of civilized humanity.

One fine day I found I had a Mediterranean diet. Just as Molière’s character, who was happy to learn he was speaking in prose, I experienced the satisfaction of right and proper eating. It turns out humankind feeds wrong.

My thingy (a smartphone) is not smart. Versatile and fast, yes; intelligent, not at all. It controls a lot of routines and no reasoning. That is not intelligence.

In education, urban planning, sustainability, in any domain, we tend to slide down the anecdotal slope of casuistry. Everything becomes a specific case.

In the vernacular, theory amounts to opinion. Everyone has theories. But in science, a theory is a verified body of knowledge.

In a group of islets in the North of Madagascar, a hitherto unknown chameleon species has been found whose adults barely reach 3 cm in length. This minuscule chameleon has the same bone arrangement as any gigantic crocodile.

Our economic system has learned to put a price to production and commerce. But it has not assessed the cost of the outsourcing of cumulative residual materials

In Sarlat, the Perigord city with a splendid medieval centre, there is a sheltered market inside a desacrilised church. The reform was supervised by the architect Jean Nouvel, born in Fumèl, a nearby town. A quote from Jean Baudrillard can be read over the immense nave door: «Architecture is a mixture of nostalgia and extreme anticipation».

Science springs from a method that measures and contrasts. Without measurements, thinking is something vague. But life-cycle assessors have no thermometers. The lay their hands on the sick creature’s forehead and knit their brows