Economics has been regarded as the dismal Science by Thomas Carlyle in the 19th century. There controversies among the social scientists about the origin of this term. The origin of this term is wrongly attributed to the Malthus' gloomy prediction about the growing population and depletion of resources by overpopulation. On the contrary, Thomas Carlyle coined this term to dismantle John Stuart Mill's idea9 0r assumption) of equal race. He proposed that all humans are the same and must be liberalized and given freedom and equal rights. He argued that all humans are the same in nature and share the same qualities in a broader sense. Thomas Carlyle argued that
a dreary, desolate and, indeed, quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science.
---Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question
a rueful -- which find the secret of this universe in "supply and demand", and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone, is also wonderful.
---Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question
A skin-deep analysis discloses that economics was declared not because of the miseries of human on earth, but because of the neutrality of economists towards a particular race. Thomas Carlyle considered white people superior to black or African. He thought it the birth-right of white people to rule over the black people. On the other hand, Mill was a liberal and believed in the liberty of humans. With this background of the term, we can say that economics is a "soulful science" rather than a dismal. The economists advocated the natural freedom of humans and denounced the forced slavery by white people.
However, Mill was pessimistic about the ending of human misery or poor people on the earth.
Malthus's law of population and Ricardo's iron law of wages and law of diminishing returns --- the notion that using more and more labor to farm one acre would produce less and less extra output --- all dictated that populations would outrun resources and that the nation's wealth could be enlarged only at the expense of the poor, who were doomed to spend "the great gofts of science as rapidly as ... [they] got them in mere insensate multiplication of the common life." Government could do no more than create conditions in which enlightened self-interest and laws of supply and demand could work efficiently. . . . Mill and other founders of political. . . maintained that advances in productivity were of little or no benefit to the working classes. In their imaginary firms, produce trivity might grow by leaps and bounds, but wage never rose for long above some psychological maximum.
---Sylvia Nassar
Mill proposed that economics work on the principles of natural laws like gravity. There is nothing one can do to improve the living standard of the working class. What economists and government can do is bring some prosperity for a while, but it cannot end the human misery that is present in nature. The equilibrium level is the misery, some prosperity can bring disequilibrium for some time. But, it comes back to its natural level, misery, by the forces of nature. It is really not a "gay science" as it doesn't bring happiness in human life. In other words, we can say that it is a gay science for a short time, but a dismal science in its nature.
In the twenty-first century, why this term has been widely used by political economists and other social scientists. It is called a dismal not because of natural forces, but because of the failure of economists or policymakers to cope up with the needs of this generation of technological innovations.
Today, when we hear the term "the dismal science," it's typically in reference to economics' most depressing outcomes (e.g.: on globalization killing manufacturing jobs: "well, that's why they call it the dismal science," etc). In other words, we've tended to align ourselves with Carlyle to acknowledge that an inescapable element of economics is human misery.
---The Atlantic
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