Accounting comprises techniques to record, verify, report, plan, and analyze governmental, commercial, or personal financial transactions. As such, accounting is related to science, technology and ethics in two ways. First, particularly since the early-twentieth century, accounting is understood as a technology rationalized by scientific theories and practiced by professionals requiring ethical guidance (Whitley 1986). Second, both large-scale technological projects and big budget science are increasingly subjected to accounting-based evaluations. Accordingly, both scientific data and procedures, and fiscal accounts of technoscience, are being audited to verify the ethical behaviors of engineers and scientists.

Varieties of Bookkeeping

The emergence of modern accounting in the mid-nineteenth century is symbolically marked by a fire and an avalanche. In 1834 the British House of Commons was razed in a blaze fed by a pyre of wooden tallies, which had been used by the Exchequer since the thirteenth century. Around the same time, the social and...