DESCRIPTION, OBJECTIVITY, AND A ROBUST PLURALISM: A REPLY TO FLEISCHMAN AND TYSON

Abstract

Readers are invited to submit materials for this feature to Professor Tyson, St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY 14618. Typically, this column will contain commentaries on or critiques of pieces of accounting history literature that have appeared in AHJ or elsewhere. DESCRIPTION, OBJECTIVITY, AND A ROBUST PLURALISM: A REPLY TO FLEISCHMAN AND TYSON If more than welcome in intent, Fleischman and Tyson's article Archival Researchers: An Endangered Species? [1997] prompted for me another question, With friends like this, . . . ?. It is a sad commentary on our field if their contributions are so apt to be minimalized that it may embarras[s] mainly descriptive accounting historians [Fleischman and Tyson (FT Dray, 1964, pp. 21-22]. In a 1989 philosophical lecture, I reviewed individually my publications, presentations, and current projects in accounting history as of that time for problematic factors regarding objectivity, usually citing from four to eight points varying materially from one case to the next, and my efforts to surmount or contain them. For my companion books [Sheldahl, 1982, 1986] covering the accounting fraternity Beta Alpha Psi over 65 years, for example, I listed [Sheldahl, 1989, p. 2] mostly joint concerns regarding eight factors: a. Periodization b. Independence from sponsor, especially in covering scandal c. Interviewing design and reliability d. Limitations of minutes and other official sources e. Random availability of files f. Displacement of postal by telephone communication g. Perspective on recent events h Pragmatic aspects. Such a piecemeal approach seems sounder than a bald assertion of It]he impossibility of historical (or of any contrary position) based on proof texting that excludes any sources of counter-arguments [F&T, 1997, pp. 97 (quoted), 9899]. This particular question-begging appeal to authority uncritically cites for example, principally [F&T, 1997, p. 97] from Ricoeur, the contention that historical selection is value guided as such [Dray, 1964, pp. 23, 24 (quoted), 27-29]. Dray has argued [1964, pp. 24 (quoted), 29-35] that this ancient argument has often been [too] quickly dismissed, only to suggest [pp. 39-40], anticipating Haskell [1990], that it attacks a straw-person concept of objectivity. Fleischman and Tyson's wholly one-sided treatment reflects none of the complexity of an issue discussed by Passmore [1958] in terms of eight alternative criterias for objectivity. That nature is abundantly clear from historian Novick's That Noble Dream [1988], a philosophically informed study of a century of objectivity discussion and debate among, most prominently, American historians, credited by a British philosopher of history [Walsh, 1965, p. 436] as having long preceded their trans-Atlantic colleagues in such a concern. Novick's rhetoric, befitting [1988, pp. 259, 269] a primary title drawn from Charles Beard, is much more relativist than I would myself favor. …