Dismal Science

Abstract

It is possible to raise a question as to the appropriateness of Carlyle's famous designation of political economy as “the dismal science” without in the least implying that political economy is not dismal. The quarrel may well be rather with the use of the definite article and not the adjective dismal. In a very fundamental sense all science is dismal, and one is not justified in thus specifically picking on political economy; the only question would be which science is the most dismal, and this question might start a considerable argument. The connection between wisdom and sadness is more or less proverbial; who cares to look through a microscope at his cheese and beer, or the complexion of his dear. ‘Tis distance lends enchantment to the view; and love is blind; he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.¹ The poet and the preacher have always seen that science is dismal, that joy is based on illusion and knowledge means disenchantment, and have been wise in fighting the advancement of science, which they have done ever since an early member of their tribe blamed human curiosity with the fall from bliss and the first introduction of evil into the world. “Knowledge of good and evil! Knowledge of good lost and evil got!” as Milton makes Adam say. It will be worthwhile looking a little at this general proposition of the dismalness of science before inquiring into the narrower question of the dismalness of political economy in comparison to other claimants for the use of the superlative. It happens to be the writer's daily toil to look at this science through the microscope as it were, and yet in spite of this special advantage for seeing its dreary aspects and the beauties of its competitors, it is not clear at once that the palm should be awarded precipitately to political economy. We should insist on something much larger than a fig-leaf at least for physiology, and are reminded that Nietzsche thought physics “intolerable.”²

Citation

Emmett, R.B. (2011), "Dismal Science", Emmett, R.B. (Ed.) Frank H. Knight in Iowa City, 1919–1928 (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 29 Part 2), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 185-196. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-4154(2011)000029B018