Scholastic Economics and Arab Scholars: The “Great Gap” Thesis Reconsidered

Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950) stands among the intellectual giants of the twentieth century, especially in the field of economics; in his long and varied impact on the profession, he is second only to Maynard Keynes. He was a pragmatist in his economic philosophy, an “objective scientific investigator with no particular axe to grind” (Newman, et al., 746). His encyclopedic History of Economic Analysis , edited after his death by his wife and published in 1954, is a monument to his gigantic and versatile achievements; and it remains the locus classicus of almost all works in this area.