IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mlb/wpaper/715.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Origin of the Term "Dismal Science" to Describe Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Dixon, R.

Abstract

Generations of students and the reading public have been taught: (a) that it was Thomas Carlyle who called economics (political economy as it was known) "the dismal science" and (b) that he did so as a reaction to the pessimistic predictions of Malthus in relation to population growth and its consequences. I shall demonstrate that proposition (a) is true but proposition (b) is, strictly speaking, false. I shall also demonstrate that Carlye first used the term in the context of a debate which was unrelated to Malthus's writings on population (indeed unrelated to Malthus at all) and that the specific context is not only interesting but also uplifting. For both reasons, the origin of the term "dismal science" is worth exploring with students. In addition, in an Appendix I provide information on the origin and original meaning of the term 'Captain(s) of Industry'. This is another of Carlyle's inventions.

Suggested Citation

  • Dixon, R., 1999. "The Origin of the Term "Dismal Science" to Describe Economics," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 715, The University of Melbourne.
    • Handle: RePEc:mlb:wpaper:715
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.economics.unimelb.edu.au/SITE/research/workingpapers/wp97_99/715.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fine, B., 2000. "Bringing the Social Back into Economies: Progress or Reductionism?," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 731, The University of Melbourne.
    2. Robert Dixon, 2006. "Carlyle, Malthus and Sismondi: The Origins of Carlyle’s Dismal View of Political Economy," History of Economics Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(1), pages 32-38, January.
    3. Fazekas, Károly, 2015. "Rosszkedvünk tana. Értelem, érzelem és közgazdaság-tudomány [The dismal matter of our discontent. Reason, sentiment, economics]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(9), pages 952-971.
    4. LL. M. Fabrizio Esposito, 2017. "A Dismal Reality: Behavioural Analysis and Consumer Policy," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 193-216, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ECONOMICS ; ECONOMIC HISTORY;

    JEL classification:

    • B00 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - General - - - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mlb:wpaper:715. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Dandapani Lokanathan (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/demelau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.