Talk:The dismal science

Expansion request
According to Thomas Malthus:
 * the phrase was actually coined by the historian Thomas Carlyle in reference to an anti-slavery essay written by John Stuart Mill.

Is this true, and if so, which essay? -- Beland 03:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It's not true. Mill wrote a response to Carlyle's essay, not the other way round. I'll alter the Malthus page. Paul B 11:11, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

eh... shouldn't the Expansion Request be part of the article itself? I'm too much of a newbie to be sure, but it seems pretty weird to request an expanded talk page...? --Oolong 11:06, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Origin of the quote
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8401269&amp;fsrc=nwlbtwfree I thought Carlyle first anointed economics the “dismal science” because liberal economists insisted that American slaves be free to sell their labour in the marketplace like everyone else. It was a debate on labour economics if I'm not wrong. Kendirangu 11:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The use of "another" in the first sentence is somewhat jarring. It feels like we've entered into the middle of a discussion -- or this paragraph has been pulled up from a later position.


 * No, it just means it's another name for economics - i.e. an alternative name. It may be jarring because of the subclause inserted between "another" and "name". Paul B 14:26, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

"Paradoxical"
Undoing a revert. The two parties need to discuss what is intended, and I believe the use is proper. U am, however, not a Carlysle expert. So, the reverted might be correct.Julzes (talk) 15:07, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Just a comment
I have to say, this is one of the least intelligible articles I've ever read on wikipedia. Granted I know little about the subject at hand, but even then, I should be able to understand what it is we're talking about here. Context please, don't assume everybody is familiar with the subject matter... this is ridiculous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.45.47.18 (talk) 09:51, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Please explain what exactly the problem is. Paul B (talk) 13:12, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I must admit I had to re-read the article a few times to gather the information I needed. Maybe modify the lead as follows:
 * "The Dismal Science" is the derogatory nickname that was given to Economics in the 19th century by the Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle. He found, much to his dismay, that the science did not support his political position favouring the reintroduction slavery.
 * Fawby (talk) 17:41, 3 August 2016 (UTC)


 * The lead paragraph should not be changed to that, because whatever Carlyle originally meant in coining the phrase, it has been broadly understood (both in the 19th century and today) in a rather different context (see next section of this page below, and Humphry House quote on article)... AnonMoos (talk) 01:15, 4 August 2016 (UTC)


 * P.S. it may be confusing that the "false etymology" section exposes a falsehood about Carlyle's original intended meaning, but nevertheless the meaning that's "false" etymologically is in fact the most widespread in actual usage in the 19th and subsequent centuries... AnonMoos (talk) 01:23, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

OK, I tried to replace the choppy small subsections near the top of the article with more of a textual narrative flow. The slavery connection is a semi-strange historical quirk, but has nothing to do with how the phrase is commonly used today, and so should not be elevated to the lead paragraph. AnonMoos (talk) 10:43, 4 August 2016 (UTC)


 * My misunderstanding, whilst slightly embarrassing, is quite telling about how difficult the page is/was to read. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fawby (talk • contribs) 22:17, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Beyond Carlyle
Whatever Carlyle originally meant, the phrase gained traction because of the doctrines of Victorian "political economy", according to which it was often claimed to be uneconomical and inefficient to use government money to alleviate lower-class misery (though it was of course perfectly proper to use government funds to protect the property of the upper classes). Variations and developments on such views included the idea that all or almost all forms of charity or "relief" had a "pauperizing" effect of creating dependency, the maxim that the condition of the best-off man on "relief" always had to be worse than the condition of the worst-off employed man, or otherwise workers would resign their jobs en masse to live on handouts, strict moralistic and other criteria separating the "deserving" and "undeserving poor", etc. etc. ad nauseam. In the eyes of some, political economy was only separated by a thin line from outright misanthropy (such as Ebenezer Scrooge's aphorisms). The influence of such political economy ideas had their effect in inhibiting the British from organizing truly timely and large-scale effective aid to meet the needs created by the great Irish famine... AnonMoos (talk) 07:24, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Here is a source that might be used for that:
 * http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/why-economics-is-really-called-the-dismal-science/282454/
 * --Kmhkmh (talk) 11:53, 10 October 2014 (UTC)


 * That seems to support the idea that the phrase "Dismal science" is something idiosyncratic casually tossed off by Carlyle. I'm adding a fortuitously-encountered quote which gives a much clearer idea what "the dismal science" meant to a lot of people in the mid-19th century. AnonMoos (talk) 11:18, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

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Requested move 11 July 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 01:36, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

The dismal science → Dismal Science – Dismal Science is how Carlyle wrote the term in the original essay. It is also how the term is given in both The Nuttall Encyclopædia and The Carlyle Encyclopedia (2004) as well as https://www.definitions.net/definition/Dismal%20Science and surely other sources. Many websites render it in lowercase (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dismalscience.asp uses both), but as one of Carlyle's philosophical concepts it should rather be rendered as he conceived it. Sinopecynic (talk) 23:42, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately for your argument, the meaning which Carlyle originally intended is NOT how it's commonly understood today (see discussion above on this talk page). Carlyle meant something or other to do with Black people in the Caribbean that I don't understand (and am not willing to devote any effort to try to understand), but hardly anyone uses it in that meaning today.  See the "Beyond Carlyle" section of the article for its most common meaning both during much of the Victorian period and certainly today. AnonMoos (talk) 01:32, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
 * My argument is typographical; it has nothing to do with the meaning of the term. For example, in Nuttall (1907), where the term is capitalised, Wood writes: "The name is applied to every science that affects to dispense with the spiritual as a ruling factor in human affairs." This definition more closely approximates the modern understanding of the term, regardless of Carlyle's intent, and it is still rendered in uppercase. Likewise, the two links to modern sources that I have provided define it in the current sense while rendering in uppercase. Sinopecynic (talk) 16:32, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't know if I care a lot about upper-case vs. lower-case, but I oppose removing the definite article from the article title. AnonMoos (talk) 23:38, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree. The best title would be The "Dismal Science" in my opinion. Sinopecynic (talk) 23:35, 15 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Oppose and refute the claim that Carlyle originally capped it. He capped a lot of things, including some uses of Dismal Science, in that book, but if you look on page 672 where he introduces the term, it's "the dismal science" (his italics and lowercase).  He also doesn't always use "the" in front; neither should we, just because it's common; it's not needed, not an indispensible part of the term.  See n-gram stats. Dicklyon (talk) 05:29, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
 * The definite article in front is because there's an inherent semantic definite reference in the phrase (and not because of anything that Carlyle ever said -- the phrase was effectively hijacked from Carlyle's originally-intended meaning long ago during the 19th century). The word "the" can be suppressed when another linguistic "determiner" word takes its place, but the bare phrase "Dismal science" without any determiner at all does not really refer to economics, but evokes Piltdown Man, Phlogiston, N-Rays, etc. etc. AnonMoos (talk) 11:37, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Fixed malformed request by substituting template; please see also {{subst:requested move}}. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 12:45, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Oppose: It's a descriptive phrase, sometimes capitalized in specialist sources, but not consistently. MOS:IDEOLOGY is the closest we have to a rule on such things, where it says "Doctrines, ideologies, philosophies, theologies, theories, movements, methods, processes, systems or "schools" of thought and practice, and fields of academic study or professional practice are not capitalized, unless the name derives from a proper name." SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨ 13:08, 16 July 2022 (UTC)