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Notes
1. I should like to thank the Editor of Accounting Education: an international journal for inviting me to write this Commentary, and thus pay homage to the memory of Ray Chambers, a great accounting scholar and worthy opponent to my own views. I also should like to acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
2. As to Chambers' claim that accounting is not realistic enough, this short Commentary does not provide space enough to reply. But I can refer the reader to Mattessich Citation(2003) which provides a comprehensive answer and treatment of this very problem together with a thorough investigation of the nature of accounting representation.
3. In achieving this, he pursued a path fittingly described by one of his biographers: ‘Having chosen to live by the sword, Chambers had to be prepared to survive on the same basis. He challenged the established order in accounting on all fronts—the academics, the professional bodies and the regulators’ (Gaffikin, Citation1994, p. 14). Indeed, Chambers rejected most of the views on valuation harboured by his contemporary colleagues, including my own ideas (e.g., see Chambers, Citation1966b, Citation1971a,Citationb—for pertinent replies, see Mattessich, Citation1967, Citation1971a,Citationb). Yet our private correspondence began very amicably as early as 1957 and, despite all later disagreements, we remained for decades in fairly friendly contact. Indeed, he and his wife broke bread at our table in Berkeley as well as Vancouver.
4. Let me quote the remarks which two prominent scholars made relatively recently at the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Accounting Hall of Fame: ‘Professor Demski: …. One of the important things that have come out of this work [on accounting information research] is the discovery that we cannot rely on the notion that anything good for the valuation market is good for other contracting avenues …. Of course, working on this finding continues in the literature and in our teaching as we try to understand the pressures under which accounting regulators and standard setters operate’ [Demski, 2002, p. 65]; and ‘Professor Horngren: …. I think the real world, when we start talking about setting accounting standards, is dominated by conflict and conflicting interests. The political aspect of all this is far more important than a lot of people like to acknowledge’ (Horngren, 2002, p. 87).
5. But the difference between ‘pure science versus applied science’ must not be equated with that between ‘theoretical versus non-theoretical’. Applied sciences too need theories, but often more general ones (e.g., as presented in Mattessich, Citation1964, pp. 30–45, 448–465) which provide place for more specific and purpose-oriented sub-theories. Those general meta-theories may even be amenable to more rigorous proofs than attempts that try to avoid the separation of meta-theory and its sub-theories.
