Unintended, but not Unanticipated Consequences
The concept “unanticipated consequences,” coined by Robert K. Merton (1936), has largely been replaced in current social science by its putative synonym, “unintended consequences.” This conflation suggests that “unintended” consequences are also “unanticipated,” effectively obscuring an interesting and real category of phenomena—consequences that are both unintended and anticipated—that warrant separate attention.