Pacioli’s Lens: A Comment

Abstract

Sangster (2018a) [Pacioli's Lens: God, Humanism, Euclid, and the Rhetoric of Double Entry. The Accounting Review, 93(2): 299-314] argues that, in the first printed manual on double-entry bookkeeping (‘DEB’) in 1494, Pacioli presented a novel ‘axiomatic’ approach that requires a corresponding ‘paradigmatic shift’ in our view of his contribution. It has long been repeatedly argued that DEB was important for enabling capitalism’s development in the West and heralded the beginning of ‘modern accounting’. However, these claims remain contested so it is important to understand the history of DEB’s emergence about 700 years ago and its underlying rationale. This paper challenges Sangster’s interpretation and calls for deeper understanding both of the historical development of DEB in the West and of the comparative accounting developments in the East, particularly in China. It tentatively concludes that, although indigenous imperial Chinese accounting practice differed in form from Western DEB, nevertheless despite its variety of forms it had in some cases captured the structural essentials of DEB’s content and functions.