Quantification and the Accounting Ideal in Science
Quantification and the Accounting Ideal in Science
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科学中的量化与会计理想
DOI：
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发表时间：
1992
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通讯作者：
T. Porter
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
T. Porter
科学中的客观性通常被学者定义为几乎等同于现实主义。相反，从客观的角度来思考它可能是有利的，这是一种理想，它将通过明确的规则来取代任意性、个性和判断。会计就是这方面客观性的典范。比深层金融身份的真实表现更重要的是，维护一套阻止自利扭曲的规则体系。否则，税法和企业报告将失去可信度。从这个角度来看，量化似乎是克服距离和不信任的一种策略。这也与自然科学有关，在自然科学中，测量和统计在将当地实验技能转化为公众知识方面至关重要。我们需要将量化理解为对一系列政治问题的回应，这是科学道德经济的一部分。它在科学中的使用在重要方面类似于会计所服务的明确的政治和行政目的。
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.