Scientific Elements of Culture

The purpose of this research is to examine whether the actual history of science regarding D.R. Scott's Cultural Significance of Accounts bears out Thomas S. Kuhn's thesis of the structure of scientific revolutions as following patterns of discovery, development of a paradigm, the emergence of anomalies producing crisis, and the development of new paradigms, all of which lead to a shift in the overall scientific world view. In addition, Scott's theory will be analyzed from the standpoint of Latour's theory of the black box as containing fundamental truth, to see whether Scott's views have the effect of either opening closed boxes to replace existing theory on one hand or constitute the emergence of an entirely new paradigm on the other. As appropriate, both scientific and what might be termed the extrascientific elements of prevailing culture will be cited, with a view toward exploring whether taking Scott's Cultural Significance of Accounts as an entirely new voice in the analysis of the economic structure of society has implications for and extended from the accounting community and the community of society at large. Accordingly, the plan of the research will be to set forth in general terms Scott's interpretative design, and then to explore by what means and in what manner this design coincides with the approach of Latour and Kuhn.

As Scott explains in the introduction to The Cultural Significance of Accounts, interpreting economic organization involves "interpretatio

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e basic balance-sheet principle has been put, from ratios and valuation methods to such diverse financial statements as cash-flow and income statements. Another aspect of the relevance of Kuhn for Scott's The Cultural Significance of Accounts is Scott's analysis of the culture as in disarray, as opposed to the apparent clarity of the basic accounting model. For present purposes, one may consider that financial praxis of the culture has been a part of this. Cushing cites shifts in tax law, and Benninger (Benninger, 1956, pp. 49-50) cites Scott's own disdain for emergent valuation and depreciation conventions in corporate accounting. Kuhn's description of a valid scientific paradigm appears to have much in common with Scott's description of the intellectual environment of accounting. First is that class of facts that the paradigm has shown to be particularly revealing of the nature of things. By employing them in solving problems, the paradigm has made them worth determining both with more precision and in a larger variety of situations . . . A second usual but smaller class of factual determinations is directed to those facts that, though often without much intrinsic interest can be compared directly with predictions from the

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