Few can contemplate without a sense of exhilaration the splendid achievements of practical energy and technical skill, which, from the latter part of the seventeenth century, were transforming the face of material civilization, and of which England was the daring, if not too scrupulous, pioneer.

Philosophically he absorbed much of Thomism which provided an objective system in contrast to what he saw as the self-centered subjectivism and relativism of modern philosophy and society. His father was a professor of political economy. and was soon translated into many languages bringing him international fame.

Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher (16 August 1911 – 4 September 1977) was an internationally influential economic thinker statistician and economist in Britain serving as Chief Economic Advisor to the UK National Coal Board for two decades. According to The Times Literary Supplement his 1973 book Small Is Beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered is among the 100 most influential books publiE. F. Schumacherd since World War II. He is best known for his critique of Western economies and his proposals for human-scale decentralized and appropriate technologies.