It is presently 100 years since Schumpeter published his first book. This book is largely about the foundations of analytical economics and it was published when he was 25. Therefore, the following formulations by Stanley Fischer (1987, 235–6) may read as if they describe his book:

Schumpeter's praise, however, was not for himself but for his friend Paul Samuelson. Like Schumpeter, Samuelson finished his PhD thesis at the age of 25. At that age, both of them had ploughed through an enormous literature with an emphasis on the underlying formal structures and analytical tools. They had found widespread confusion and a lack of recognition of the basic unity under the multiform surface of topics and modes of formulation, and they both wanted to overcome confusion and lay the foundations for future research.