The Aphoristic Corner: Uno spazio per pensare, non solo per leggere

11/12/2025

DARE, Project

The Aphoristic Corner: Uno spazio per pensare, non solo per leggere

This section gathers brief quotations from authors who, directly or indirectly, have addressed the themes at the heart of the DARE project: health, prevention, time, care, technology, and the human condition.
These are not mere literary embellishments, but stimuli for reflection that help us to renew our perspective on contemporary life, finding in the conciseness of the aphorism a key to understanding – and, at times, rethinking – the present.

The theories that led to the awarding of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics to the three scholars Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt find an effective synthesis in some of the insights that have transformed our understanding of economic growth. Joel Mokyr reminds us that «the wealth of a society lies not in its capital, but in its ability to generate new ideas capable of changing the way we produce and live» (“The Lever of Riches”, Oxford University Press, 1990). It is an invitation to view technological creativity as the very foundation of progress.

Sulla stessa linea, la teoria schumpeteriana di Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt insiste sul fatto che «la crescita duratura non emerge da una moltiplicazione infinita di beni, ma da un flusso ininterrotto di innovazioni che rendono obsolete le tecnologie precedenti» (“A Model of Growth Through Creative Destruction”, Econometrica, 1992). Ogni innovazione rappresenta infatti una spinta dirompente: «un piccolo terremoto economico che spinge la società a reinventarsi» (“Growth and Creative Destruction.” NBER Working Paper No. 3223, 1987).

Ma l’innovazione non è solo un fenomeno economico: è anche un tratto culturale. Mokyr ci ricorda che «la prosperità si fonda non su quello che già sappiamo fare bene, ma su quanto siamo disposti a rischiare per immaginare e costruire qualcosa di nuovo» (“The Lever of Riches”, op. cit.).

Insieme, queste idee compongono un’unica grande lezione: la crescita non è il risultato automatico dei mercati, ma l’esito di un processo continuo di creatività, coraggio e trasformazione, il cuore stesso della visione premiata dal Nobel 2025.

Chi sono gli autori

Joel Mokyr is an economist and economic historian at Northwestern University, renowned for his studies on the historical roots of technological creativity and on the role of knowledge in economic progress. Philippe Aghion, a French economist and professor at the Collège de France, is among the leading theorists of endogenous growth and of innovation as the driving force behind economic cycles. Peter Howitt, a Canadian economist and Professor Emeritus at Brown University, developed together with Aghion the Schumpeterian model of growth based on creative destruction, which has become a key reference point in the study of technological and economic dynamics.

In 2025, the three scholars were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for their fundamental contribution to the understanding of innovation-driven growth.