Metamorphosis of Accounting Thought

Abstract

This study proposes a transformation of accounting thought by removing the obstacles that have limited its development in modernity. Economic knowledge is grounded in the idea of progress, conceived through successive ruptures in the subject-object relationship: first, with the application of the scientific method advanced by Francis Bacon; then, with the individual-thought relation of Cartesian rationalism; and finally, with Newton’s third law of mechanics, which introduced into the social sciences concepts derived from natural science mechanics. Through a critical analysis, the study identifies logical obstacles such as the principle of the excluded middle, which fostered the fragmentation of knowledge into specialized fields that obscure reality. Along these lines, it highlights socio-natural relations framed within the subject-object duality, which manipulate nature under the paradigm of the first law of thermodynamics: “matter and energy are transformed, not destroyed,” thereby fostering the illusion of inexhaustible resources. These economic ideas shape the foundations of accounting knowledge, which can be reoriented through several displacements: an ontological shift from specialization to totality; a methodological shift from linearity to complexity; a temporal shift by incorporating time as a determinant in the construction of thought; and a praxeological shift by integrating ethical factors into the development of a technoscience that overcomes segregation and sequential reasoning. In this way, the study outlines a new path for the construction of integral accounting thought.