Accounting and Science Natural Inquiry and Commercial Reason

A truly interdisciplinary examination of the economics of science and the relationship between science and accounting.

In recent years policy makers and scientists have become increasingly interested in the economics of science, and in particular in the relationship between accounting and science. This book, originally published as a special issue of the journal Science in Context , provides a truly interdisciplinary approach to this subject. The contributors explore, in a number of different ways, the constitutive role that practices of economic calculation play in the conduct of science and the forms of economic life within which science is embedded. Challenging conventional views, they suggest that if scientific and accounting practices are to be properly understood, they must be studied in relation to a complex background of specialist communities, funding institutions and demands for public accountability. This book will be invaluable for scholars and policy makers working in the field.

Foreword: The flat-earthers of social theory Bruno Latour; 1. From the science of accounts to the financial accountability of science Michael Power; 2. Making things quantitative Theodore M. Porter; 3. Natural and artificial budgets: accounting for Goethe's economy of nature Myles W. Jackson; 4. A calculating profession: Victorian actuaries among the statisticians Timothy L. Alborn; 5. The factory as laboratory Peter Miller and Ted O'Leary; 6. Connecting science to the economic: accounting calculation and the visibility of research and development Keith Robson; 7. Governing science: patents and public sector science Brad Sherman; 8. On customers and costs: a story from public sector science John Law and Madeleine Akrich; 9. A visible hand in the marketplace of ideas: precision measurement as arbitrage Philip Mirowski; 10. Towards a philosophy of science accounting: a critical rendering of instrumental rationality Steve Fuller; Index.

This book, originally published as a special issue of the journal Science in Context, provides a truly interdisciplinary approach to the study of the economics of science. Challenging conventional views, the contributors argue that the subject must be examined in its full context if it is to be properly understood.