Economists have traditionally been leery at mentalités as a factor in long-term economic development. In the budding literature on the economic rise of the West, such factors have been ignored or curtly dismissed. In the past, economists' hostility to religious factors stems from the incompleteness of such theories. Attitudes were a matter of degree, not of absolutes.

p. 171 - The lever of riches: Technological creativity and economic progress, 1992