1100 PONTIFICIAE ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARVM SCRIPTA VARIA -
28
appreciated. Both the « western » and the « eastern » powers
have started helping in the economic development of the less
advanced countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, but
still without an adequate impact. The time has come to re-
cognise that economic aid is essential but is also not sufficient.
7.2. Revolutions to capture political power have been oc-
curring throughout human history and are even now occurring
in many of the politically independent countries in Latin Ame-
rica or in most of the newly independent countries in Asia and
Africa. Such revolutions do not automatically promote rapid
economic development, because purely political revolutions do
aot lead to any fundamental transformation of the old society
based on the principle of authority associated with levels of
status. It is becoming increasingly clear that rapid economic
development cannot be achieved without developing a structure
of society in which decisions would tend to be made more and
more on grounds of reason, that is, in accordance with the
orinciple of objective validity instead of authority. It is rele-
vant to note that the French Revolution was preceded by the
age of reason; the American War of Independence had the
support of influential leaders inspired by the spirit of science;
and the socialist government, which was established after the
October Revolution in 1917 in Russia, made great efforts to
build up a countrywide system of science-oriented education
and to promove scientific research and, in this way, succeeded
in modernising the whole society leading to rapid economic
development.
7-3. One thing is clear. In the absence of rapid economic
development, political conditions in the less advanced countries
would remain unstable. In many or most countries there would
be one revolution after another tending to get the two power
groups involved “directly or indirectly in the struggle. The
world must get out of this vicious circle. - There are only two
possibilities. One is for a violent type of revolution to occur
141 Mahalanobis I - pag. 22
