As with every question in social science, correlation is not causation. Do better-educated countries get richer, or can richer countries afford more education? One way to cut the knot is to take advantage of the fact that a cause must precede its effect. Studies that assess education at Time 1 and wealth at Time 2, holding all else constant, suggest that in-vesting in education really does make countries richer. At least it does if the education is secular and rationalistic. Until the 20th century, Spain was an economic laggard among Western countries, even though Span-iards were highly schooled, because Spanish education was controlled by the Catholic Church, and "the children of the masses received only oral instruction in the Creed, the catechism, and a few simple manual skills.... Science, mathematics, political economy, and secular history were considered too controversial for anyone but trained theologians." Clerical meddling has similarly been blamed for the economic lag of parts of the Arab world today.7
Homosapien
Homo sapiens, "knowing man," is the species that uses information to resist the rot of entropy and the burdens of evolution. Humans everywhere acquire knowledge about their landscape, its flora and fauna, the tools and weapons that can subdue them, and the net-works and norms that entangle them with kin, allies, and enemies. They accumulate and share that knowledge with the use of language, gesture, and face-to-face tutelage
The proximity instituted by the asylum, an intimacy neither chains nor bars would ever violate again, does not allow reciprocity: only the nearness of observation that watches, that spies, that comes closer in order to see better, but moves ever farther away, since it accepts and acknowledges only the values of the Stranger. The science of mental disease, as it would develop in the asylum, would always be only of the order of observation and classification. It would not be a dialogue.
Researchers often recommend that older adults keep sharp by engaging in new, complex learning.
Science gives us many wonderful discoveries machines, computers, weapons but how do we use these things? Will they give us a better life, or will they destroy us in the end?
