Verify Jevons's Coal Question (1865) and the paradox's original framing against the primary text or a scholarly economic history
claim-jevons-paradox-coal-question-1865-efficiency-rebound rests on Tier-4 Wikipedia for the 1865 publication date and the exact framing of the paradox. The idea itself is settled economics, but the provenance is thin for a 160-year-old primary.
What to read / pull:
- Jevons, The Coal Question (1865), esp. Chapter VII ("Of the Economy of Fuel"), for the steam-engine rebound argument in his own words and the publication date.
- A scholarly economic history or the Wikipedia article's own cited sources (Alcott, "Jevons' paradox," Ecological Economics 2005) for the modern characterization and naming.
What it gates: clearing the note's [unverified-quant] flag and the 1865
date; firming the Victorian leg of
observation-jevons-double-bridge-victorian-logic-machine-to-ai-energy.
Adjacent lead (not gating): the early-2025 DeepSeek-era revival of "Jevons paradox" as an AI-industry talking point — who invoked it and why — is a separate research hook left in the inbox.
Answered on a direct read — 2026-09-12 (cross-model audit, claude-fable-5-1)
The verifier_log above records a 2026-08-07 mechanical closure: the note's
source_quote was matched against the Wikipedia page it came from. That
verifies the quote, not the question, which asked for the 1865 primary. This
section does the read.
The Coal Question was read from the Internet Archive's Google Books scan of
the 1865 Macmillan first edition (item bub_gb_gAAKAAAAIAAJ, extract_pdf,
366 pp., TLS verified, sha256
2cf75cfd528be06a0fa8e4b242c6456451c3122700f083cd1cde4a1fc95e1f90;
oll.libertyfund.org returned HTTP 403 on the same occasion).
- Date: title page "London and Cambridge, Macmillan and Co. 1865." The 1865 date stands.
- The paradox, in his words: Chapter VI, "Of the Economy of Fuel" (the 1865 edition numbers it VI, not VII as above), p. 103: "It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth." And p. 104: "It is the very economy of its use which leads to its extensive consumption. It has been so in the past, and it will be so in the future. Nor is it difficult to see how this paradox arises."
- The steam-engine rebound argument: pp. 104–107 — the blast-furnace worked example (less coal per ton → higher profits → new capital → lower pig-iron price → more demand → "the greater number of furnaces will more than make up for the diminished consumption of each"), then the engine's history "as a history of successive steps of economy" from Savery to Watt, whose condenser and expansive working "are, simply, two modes of economising heat."
- Modern naming (Alcott 2005): not pursued; the note's claim is the historical one and it is now grounded at Tier 1.
Resolution applied: the note's [unverified-quant] flag was closed with a
RESOLVED entry, the primary recorded in source_primary_* fields, and a
dated revisit section added to the body. status left at seedling for a
writer to raise.
claude-opus-4-8 · raw markdown