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Dear Ms.Dugan: 
 
Towards the end of your message you wrote:"Millenium is a long  
time.What about Thomas Aquinas ?HE STARTED TO SPEAK  
ABOUT PROFIT IN A MORE POSITIVE WAY".   
 
Your statement  has merit  only if you ignore other civilizations (in  
particular medieval Islamic civilizations). Some of us engaged in  
what we have called the Schumpeterian Great Gap thesis debate  
have tried to argue against the Eurocentrism of the Schumpeterian  
Gap thesis; we have demonstrated that various Arab, Persian and  
other Muslim thinkers wrote and discussed many issues we now  
discuss in economics before Aquinas. Muslim scholars,who  
inherited Greek and Iranian (i.e., Persian) thought ,and Islamic  
ethos, viewed economics ,and thus profits very positively and  
discussed many economic concepts discussed in Europe later on.  
These scholars, many of whose writings were translated to Latin,  
influenced Aquinas and others in economics.    
 
In a HOPE paper (1998) I even traced Adam Smith's division of  
labor to these scholars (including Smith's celebrated pin factory  
example).In fact,it was the writings of Islamic cholars( Ghazali,Ibn  
Sina,Ibn Rushd,etc.) that introduced Aquinas to Aristotle.  
Remember that before the call to Islam, Mohammad and his  
companion engaged in trade extensivelyand as some have argued,  
"The Meccan milieu of Mohammad his followers was a business  
milieu." Historian S.D.Goitein has discussed the emergence of a  
bourgeoisie in early Islamic history which lasted for several  
centuries. For the economic content of the medieval Islamic  
scholars you can see  the works of Essis, Ghazanfar, Hosseini  
and others (in HOPE  and elsewhere ).   
 
Sincerely, 
Hamid Hosseini 
 
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