Meanwhile, Switzerland got a three-peat of Nobel Prizes in Medicine in 1948, 1949, and 1950.
It makes sense that a guy like Welles would value art and throw scorn on technology. Stability is necessary for investment and the build-up of capital; it isn't necessary to make a painting.
It may be useful to distinguish between Orson Welles, the man, and Harry Lime, the antagonist of the movie, played by Welles. I don't think it's terribly reasonable to make an assertion about what a person thinks by the lines of their character. Especially when their character is hardly to be considered a model of anything good or reasonable.
Renaissance Italy was also a hotspot for the development of technology, far more than Switzerland at the time. A lot of this development was driven by warfare and enabled by achievements in the arts: perspective, for example, enabled far more detailed schematic drawings. Or, the numerous architectural innovations which enabled buildings like the Duomo to be constructed. Most of the best-known Italian renaissance artists were also engineers.
There’s something missing in our appreciation of the Renaissance, says Paolo Galluzzi, professor of the history of science at the University of Florence-something very important. While we rightly glorify this period as an extraordinary flowering of humanism and the arts, most of us have overlooked the engineering accomplishments that were just as much a part of the Renaissance as the “Mona Lisa.”
It makes sense that a guy like Welles would value art and throw scorn on technology. Stability is necessary for investment and the build-up of capital; it isn't necessary to make a painting.