Scientific Provenance of Accounting

Abstract

The commencement of accounting is dated at the outset of civilizations. Instead, the science age began less than five centuries ago. Numerous discussions concerning the recognition of accounting as one of the academic disciplines emerged in the American literature recently. Therefore, the question whether accounting truly belongs to academic disciplines or not is the current issue. However, the former consideration should be formulated differently, since that matter is much deeper than the original problem. Therefore we state the following question: “Is accounting a sort of science or not?”. The study presented in this paper demonstrates that accounting fulfills most of conditions that are essential to consider its scientific provenance. Theory of capital, which is briefly discussed in the article, is a significant part of accounting, which proves that our discipline is the real science. Accepting the statement that the measurement process requires the recognition of what is measured in the first place, it is clear that the recognition of capital belongs to accounting as well. All these deliberations lead to the conclusion that scientific fundamentals of accounting theory enable accounting systems to provide good services for the entire economy.