Editing Conventional wisdom (section)

==History==
The term "conventional wisdom" dates back to at least 1838, as a synonym for "commonplace knowledge".<ref name="GBS-Inquiry">{{cite book
 |title=An inquiry into the moral and religious character of the American government
 |last=Warner
 |first=Henry Whiting
 |year=1838
 |publisher=Wiley and Putnam
 |location=New York
 |page= [https://archive.org/details/aninquiryintomo00frelgoog/page/n41 35]
 |url=https://archive.org/details/aninquiryintomo00frelgoog}}</ref>{{refn|"It will be seen that we appeal, in such a case, neither to the records of legislation nor yet to the conventional wisdom of our forefathers."—(presumably) T. Frelinghuysen|group=n}} It was used in a number of works, occasionally in a benign<ref name="GBS-History">''E.g.,'' [https://archive.org/details/historydemocrac00capegoog 1 Nahum Capen, ''The History of Democracy'' (1874), page 477] ("millions of all classes alike are equally interested and protected by the practical judgment and conventional wisdom of ages").</ref> or neutral<ref name="GBS-Shallow">''E.g.,'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=rwsCAAAAYAAJ "Shallow Theorists", ''American Educational Monthly'' 383 (Oct. 1866)] ("What is the result? Just what conventional wisdom assumes it would be.").</ref>
sense, but more often pejoratively.<ref name="GBS-Technique-Meditations">''E.g.,'' [https://archive.org/details/techniquethomas00beacgoog Joseph Warren Beach, ''The Technique of Thomas Hardy'' (1922), page 152] ("He has not the colorless monotony of the business man who follows sure ways to success, who has conformed to every rule of conventional wisdom, and made himself as featureless as a potato field, as tame as an extinct volcano."); [https://books.google.com/books?id=TeQz-58sVOkC "Meditations", ''The Life'' (May 1905), page 224] ("in the end he fulfilled the promise of the Lord, and proved that conventional wisdom is short-sighted, narrow, and untrustworthy").</ref> Despite this previous usage, the term is often credited to the economist [[John Kenneth Galbraith]], who used it in his 1958 book ''[[The Affluent Society]]'':<ref name="Leibovich">''E.g.,'' [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/weekinreview/09leibovich.html Mark Leibovich, "A Scorecard on Conventional Wisdom", ''N.Y. Times'' (March 9, 2008)].</ref>

{{bquote|It will be convenient to have a name for the ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability, and it should be a term that emphasizes this predictability. I shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the conventional wisdom.<ref name="Galbraith">John Kenneth Galbraith, ''The Affluent Society'' (1958), chapter 2.</ref>}}

Galbraith specifically prepended "The" to the phrase to emphasize its uniqueness, and sharpened its meaning to narrow it to those commonplace beliefs that are also acceptable and comfortable to society, thus enhancing their ability to resist facts that might diminish them.{{cn|date=March 2025}} He repeatedly referred to it throughout the text of ''The Affluent Society'', invoking it to explain the high degree of resistance in academic economics to new ideas. For these reasons, he is usually credited with the invention and popularization of the phrase in modern usage.{{cn|date=March 2025}}