Quantification and the Accounting Ideal in Science

Abstract

Objectivity in science has normally been defined by scholars as almost synonymous with realism. It may be advantageous to think of it instead in terms of impersonality, an ideal that would replace arbitrariness, idiosyncracy and judgment by explicit rules. Accounting is an exemplar of this aspect of objectivity. More important than the true representation of deep underlying financial identities is the maintenance of a system of rules that blocks self-interested distortion. Otherwise, tax codes and corporate reports would lose their credibility. From this standpoint, quantification appears as a strategy for overcoming distance and distrust. This pertains also to the natural sciences, where measurement and statistics have been crucial in transforming local experimental skills into public knowledge. We need to understand quantification as a response to a set of political problems, part of the moral economy of science. Its use in science is analogous in important ways to the explicitly political and administrative purposes served by accounting.

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“…Historical analyses of objectivity (e.g., Daston, 1992;Daston & Galison, 1992Dear, 1992;Porter, 1992) have revealed how the use of this concept has changed during the last few hundred years. As Daston (1992) has stated, in the context of acquiring knowledge, different virtues have been attached to the concept and, thus, the methods that have been taken to secure objectivity have been distinct at different periods of time.…”