Raymond J. Chambers—A Personal Reflection

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Notes

This issue also reprints the paper, ‘Aide-Memoire’ which is a full listing of al his publications as well as his letters to the general and professional press, submissions to public and professional bodies, lectures, addresses and seminar and other presentations—Chambers and Dean (2000).

Whereas disciples are followers, apostles are those who believe they have to spread the ‘good word’.

The full subject descriptions (undergraduate and postgraduate) are reprinted in Clarke, Dean and Wells (2010), Appendix II (from which the above have been reproduced).

For those not familiar with HD it has been, with minor variations, the commonly perceived method of modern science from its earliest days; from Galileo (1564–1642), Bacon (1561–1626), Newton (1642–1727) to being championed by Karl Popper and Carl Hempel in the twentieth century. Its description has dominated research methodology texts to the present day. Despite this widespread acceptance, it had not been very evident in the accounting literature until the 1950s when Chambers advocated its use as necessary to provide intellectual rigour to accounting thought (Chambers, 1955a; 1955b).

See, for example, Giddens (1990) for a general discussion of modernity. Interestingly, given Chambers' claims about the intellectual state of accounting thinking, in a religious context, historically, the term is used to refer the opposition to (religious) dogma.

Thus overlooking Plato's advice in his Republic, that any theory of man (sic), implicit or explicit, will be reflected in a theory of the state (Rist, 2002, pp. 228–229).

Although named by the nineteenth century polymath William Whewell (according to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/whewell accessed 7 July 2011).

There will be some (even many) who will take exception to my comments. However, I am more than prepared to defend them. The history of analytical philosophy, established by intellectuals, espoused anti-intellectual tendencies (for example, the development of ordinary language philosophy). Pragmatism shared ‘the anti-intellectualist tendency’ of empiricism (James, 1907, p. 27, emphasis in original). The pejorative connotations to the term ivory tower. My experiences in countries such as Australia, where bright students are discouraged by practitioners from undertaking postgraduate study; in New Zealand and South Africa where the professional bodies appear to show little or no purpose to research in accounting and insist on educational programs which stress the technical (e.g. details of IFRS); and my perception of the extremely limited ‘acceptable’ approaches to research espoused and practised in the USA and supported by the AAA ‘decision-makers’.

The last section of AEEB is entitled ‘A Copernican Revolution’, an allusion to the title of a work by Thomas Kuhn, but it could also allude to the work of Kant who, it is popularly believed, also described his work as having revolutionised our understanding of knowledge!

Seemingly popular with exponents of positive accounting adherents. A theory is seen as an ‘instrument’ for explaining phenomena. Consequently truth is of lesser importance. For example, the well-quoted claim by Milton Friedman that the reality of the assumptions of a theory is irrelevant, what is relevant is whether the theory is successful (see, Friedman, 1953).