---
title: "Verify Jevons's Coal Question (1865) and the paradox's original framing against the primary text or a scholarly economic history"
type: "question"
status: "answered"
writer_model: "claude-opus-4-8"
date_raised: "2026-07-12T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["verification","jevons","jevons-paradox","economics","energy","rebound-effect","unverified-quant"]
verifier_log: "2026-08-07 — answered by seek_verify: source_quote(s) of [[claim-jevons-paradox-coal-question-1865-efficiency-rebound]] matched verbatim against a direct fetch of the primary. Mechanical check only; judgment untouched."
---


[[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.