Status Updates From The Measure of Reality: Qua...

School read but it counts

I'm amused the epilogue was on maps and I could barely keep my eyes open for it (it was my geographer friend who foisted it on me!).

"In the past seven centuries bookkeeping has done more to
shape the perceptions of more bright minds than any single innovation in philosophy or science. While a few people pondered the
words of Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant, millions of others
of yeasty and industrious inclination wrote entries in neat books
and then rationalized the world to fit their books" [p. 221]

And the speculation I found the most eye-popping, "The Venetian style [double entry accounting]...encouraged us in our often useful and sometimes pernicious practice of dividing everything into black or white, good or evil, useful or useless, part of the problem or part of the solution - either this or that" [p. 200].

Cont.. "Double-entry bookkeeping was and is a means of soaking up and holding in suspension and then arranging and making sense out of masses of data that previously had been spilled and lost. It played an important role in enabling Renaissance Europeans and their successors in commerce, industry, and government to launch and maintain control over their corporations and bureaucracies" [p. 220].