Exclusive emphasis on observables

Indeed today's progress in science and technology can foster a certain exclusive emphasis on observable data, and an agnosticism about everything else. For the methods of investigation which these sciences use can be wrongly considered as the supreme rule of seeking the whole truth. By virtue of their methods these sciences cannot penetrate to the intimate notion of things. Indeed the danger is present that man, confiding too much in the discoveries of today, may think that he is sufficient unto himself and no longer seek the higher things. (Second Vatican Council. Gaudium et Spes 1965).

The pursuit of "visible" results is a fantasy plaguing the present phase of international cooperation, which suffers from the trauma of being accused of being "inefficient" by the economic and political actors. In the face of the historical and long term problems of poverty and underdevelopment, "visible" and short term results are often contradictory and detrimental to a vision that conceives of development as a self-sustaining process, that can only be long term.