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The dismal science is a derogatory term for the discipline of economics. Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher
The phrase "the dismal science" first occurs in Thomas Carlyle's 1849 tract, "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question", in which he argued in favor of reintroducing
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172 Carlyle also extended this imperative to other races. Carlyle did not originally coin the phrase "dismal science" as a response to the economically-influential theories of
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature and philosophy.
Born in Ecclefechan, Dum ...
used the phrase in his 1849 essay, '' Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question'', in contrast with the then-familiar phrase "gay science" used to refer to the art of troubadour
A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a ''trobairit ...
s.
Origin
The phrase "the dismal science" first occurs in Thomas Carlyle's 1849 tract, "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question", in which he argued in favor of reintroducing slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
in order to restore productivity to the West Indies
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Grea ...
: "Not a 'gay science', I should say, like some we have heard of; no, a dreary, desolate and, indeed, quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the ''dismal science''."
Economics was "dismal" in "find ngthe secret of this Universe in 'supply and demand', and reducing the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone" or personal freedom. Instead, the "idle Black man in the West Indies
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Grea ...
" should be "''compelled'' to work as he was fit, and to ''do'' the Maker's will who had constructed him".As quoted in Joseph Persky, 1990. "Retrospectives: A Dismal Romantic," ''Journal of Economic Perspectives'', 4(4), pp. 167-169 165172.html" ;"title="p
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172 Carlyle also extended this imperative to other races. Carlyle did not originally coin the phrase "dismal science" as a response to the economically-influential theories of
Thomas Malthus
Thomas Robert Malthus (; 13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834) was an English cleric, scholar and influential economist in the fields of political economy and demography.
In his 1798 book ''An Essay on the Principle of Population'', Malt ...
, who predicted that starvation would inevitably result as projected population growth exceeded the rate of increase in the food supply. However, Carlyle used the word "dismal" in relation to Malthus' theory in ''Chartism'' (1839):
Carlyle's view was criticised by John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
as making a virtue of toil itself, stunting the development of the weak, and committing the "vulgar error of imputing every difference which he finds among human beings to an original difference of nature".
Amongst those who were influenced by Carlyle's assessment was John Ruskin
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and poli ...
, who wrote that Carlyle had "led the way" for his own critique of political economy in ''Unto This Last ''Unto This Last'' is an essay critical of economics by John Ruskin, first published between August and December 1860 in the monthly journal ''Cornhill Magazine'' in four articles.
Title
The title is a quotation from the Parable of the Workers ...
'' (1860).
Beyond Carlyle
Many at the time and afterward have understood the phrase in relation to the grim predictions drawn from the principles of 19th centurypolitical economy
Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour m ...
. According to Humphry House:''The Dickens World'', Second Edition, Oxford Paperbacks, Oxford University Press, 1960 (1942), pp. 70-71, 75.
(Ricardo, however, did not believe that wages must always fall to the minimum. He believed that they were a function of the margin of production.)
In modern terms, the phrase is sometimes referenced by synonymous terms like "the miserable science", as shown in this quote by E. W. Dijkstra: "As economics is known as 'The Miserable Science', software engineering
Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development.
A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...
should be known as 'The Doomed Discipline'".
See also
*''An Essay on the Principle of Population
An, AN, aN, or an may refer to:
Businesses and organizations
* Airlinair (IATA airline code AN)
* Alleanza Nazionale, a former political party in Italy
* AnimeNEXT, an annual anime convention located in New Jersey
* Anime North, a Canadian ...
''
*Critique of political economy
Critique of political economy or critique of economy is a form of social critique that rejects the various social categories and structures that constitute the mainstream discourse concerning the forms and modalities of resource allocation and ...
*Malthusian growth model
A Malthusian growth model, sometimes called a simple exponential growth model, is essentially exponential growth based on the idea of the function being proportional to the speed to which the function grows. The model is named after Thomas Robert ...
– the math behind the theory
*Malthusianism
Malthusianism is the idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population die off. This event, c ...
– political (and economic) fallout from the theory
References
External links
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dismal Science Economics catchphrases Criticisms of economics Thomas Carlyle