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 extra scientific 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 "interpretation of cultural organization which places accounts at the very center or pivotal point of that organization (Scott, 1973, p. vii). His approach is frankly parochial inasmuch as it seeks to explain societies that use the double-entry accounting convention in terms of accounting as a focal point of social structure and organization. His view appears to be that the cultural (and therefore economic) unity of such societies is very much defined and can very much be ju...