Accounting and Science Natural Inquiry and Commercial Reason [Paperback]

A truly interdisciplinary examination of the economics of science and the relationship between science and accounting.In considering the implications of accounting for science, this volume explores the links between the ideals of scientific objectivity and administrative and political values. It looks at laboratory practice in social context, and evaluates the emerging interest in the economics of science.In considering the implications of accounting for science, this volume explores the links between the ideals of scientific objectivity and administrative and political values. It looks at laboratory practice in social context, and evaluates the emerging interest in the economics of science.This volume is concerned with the intellectual intersections between the history and sociology of science and the history and sociology of accounting. The various chapters describe a broad shift from concerns for the scientific credentials of accounting to a recognition of the constitutive role that accounting plays for science. They explore the links between the ideals of scientific objectivity and different administrative and political values, look at laboratory practice in social context, and evaluate the emerging interest in the economics of science. The volume as a whole considers the implications of accounting for science, particularly given recent initiatives in the industrialized world to make science more accountable.Foreword: The flat-earthers of social theory Bruno Latour; 1. From the science of accounts to the financial accountability of science Michael Power; 2. Making things quantitative Theodore M. Porter; 3. Natural and artificial budgets: accounting for Goethe's economy of nature Myles W. Jackson; 4. A calculating profession: Victorian actuaries among the statisticians Timothy L. Alborn; 5. The factory as laboratory Peter Miller and Ted O'Leary; 6. Connecting science to the economic: accounting calculation and the visibility of research and development Keith lsE