Charles C. Mann Quote

The scientists had taken a route through Mexico that was much like the route taken by Bill and Marjorie Vogt two years later. Both groups wrote reports documenting the same terrible poverty and eroded land, but their ideas about the remedy were starkly different. To Vogt, the basic problem was land degradation, and the primary cure was to ease the burden on the land. By contrast, the scientists believed that Mexico’s issues were caused, at bottom, by lack of knowledge and tools. The difference between these two approaches is profound, and at the heart of the split between Wizards and Prophets.