Why Is Economics Called the Dismal Science

If youve ever studied economics, youve probably heard at some point that economics is referred to as the dismal science. Granted, economists arent always the most upbeat bunch of people, but is that really why the phrase came about? Origin of the Phrase Dismal Science to Describe Economics As it turns out, the phrase has been around since the mid-19th century, and it was coined by historian Thomas Carlyle. At the time, the skills required for writing poetry were referred to as the gay science, so Carlyle decided to call economics the dismal science as a clever turn of phrase. The popular belief is that Carlyle started using the phrase in response to the dismal prediction of 19th-century reverend and scholar Thomas Malthus, who forecasted that the rate of growth in the food supply as compared to the rate of the growth in population would result in mass starvation. (Luckily for us, Malthus assumptions regarding technological progress were overly, well, dismal, and such mass starvation never transpired.) While Carlyle did use the word dismal in reference to Malthus findings, he didnt use the phrase dismal science until his 1849 work Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question. In this piece, Carlyle argued that reintroducing (or continuing) slavery would be morally superior to relying on the market forces of supply and demand, and he labeled the profession of economists who disagreed with him, most notably John Stuart Mill, as the dismal science, since Carlyle believed that the emancipation of slaves would leave them worse off. (This prediction has also turned out to be incorrect, of course.)