"The dismal science" is a derogatory alternative name for economics devised by the Victorian historian Thomas Carlyle in the 19th century. The term is an inversion of the phrase "gay science", meaning "life-enhancing knowledge", a reference to the technical skills of song and verse writing. This was a familiar expression at the time, and was later adopted as the title of a book by Nietzsche in The Gay Science.
Famous quotes containing the words dismal and/or science:
“When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is
taboo’d by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without impropriety;”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)