Yoly’s Reviews > A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy > Status Update

Growth through innovation depends on a direct link between culture and technology, through attitudes toward nature and the beliefs regarding relations between humans and their physical environment ... A critical cultural belief that drives economic growth and complements the belief in the virtuousness of technology is a belief in economic progress. Such a belief is positive, normative, and prescriptive.

The drivers of technological progress and eventually economic performance were attitude and aptitude. The former set the willingness and energy with which people try to understand the natural world around them; the latter determines their success in turning such knowledge into higher productivity and living standards.