PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Before the publication of Small is Beautiful, his bestselling reappraisal of Western economic attitudes, Dr E. F. Schumacher was already well known as an economist, journalist and progressive entrepreneur. He was Economic Adviser to the National Coal Board from 1950 to 1970, and was also the originator of the concept of Intermediate Technology for developing countries and and Founder and Chairman for the Intermediate Technology Development Group Ltd. He also served as President of the Soil Association (Britain's largest organic farming organisation, founded thirty years ago) and as Director of the Scott-Bader Company (pathfinders is polymer chemistry and common ownership). Born in Germany, he first came to England in 1930 as a Rhodes Scholar to study economics at New College, Oxford. Later, at the age of twenty-two, he taught economics at Columbia University, New York. As he found theorising without practical experience unsatisfying, he then went into business, farming and journalism. He resumed the academic life for a period at Oxford during the war, afterwards serving as Economic Adviser to the British Control Commission in Germany from 1946 to 1950. In later years, his advice on problems of rural development was sought by many overseas governments. Dr Schumacher was awarded the CBE in 1974. He died in 1977.
Under Maimonides' title, Schumacher expands on the patchwork religious-philosophical elements in his earlier Small Is Beautiful. Drawing on Scholasticism, Eastern religions, and yoga, he enumerates four Levels of Being - mineral, vegetable, animal, and human - and four Fields of Knowledge relating to the internal and external aspects of the self and others. Contending that modern philosophy and science, or, collectively, Scientism, deal only with the lowest Level of Being, the mineral, and with external appearances, Schumacher argues that meaningful knowledge (Wisdom) can only be attained through self-awareness, which transcends consciousness (the attribute of the highest, human Level of Being). Schumacher views human life as consisting of problems which are not amenable to the simple technical solutions of scientism, and which can only be dealt with by Wisdom (ecology is an example) - hence the title. Like all works that attempt to describe mystical experiences or knowledge, this book lacks the concrete theoretical elaboration that allows for the transfer of that knowledge - we have to take Schumacher's word for it because he cannot describe it. The argument for Faith ultimately rests on Faith itself. (Kirkus Reviews)
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