INTRODUCTION
by
William W. Cooper Nadya Kozmetsky Scott Centennial Fellow
University of Texas, Austin Accounting Hall of Fame Board of Nominations
Our Inductee’s favorite reading is that of the mathematician, Raymond Smullyan. I quote from one of Smullyan’s recent works, entitled “What is There?” as follows:
One dictionary defines ontology as the science of being; the branch of metaphysics that investigates the nature of being and of the essence of things . . . [Thus Willard van Orman Quine the American philosopherlogician] starts his famous essay On What There Is with the words, ‘A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three AngloSaxon monosyllables: ‘What is there?’ It can be answered, moreover, in a word — “Everything.”
A similar philosophy was expressed in Oscar Mandel’s delightful book, Chi Po and the Sorcerer: A Chinese Tale for Children and Philosophers. In one scene, the boy Chi Po is taking painting lessons from the sorcerer Bu Fu. At one point Bu Fu says ‘No, No! You have merely painted what is! Anyone can paint what is; the real secret is to paint what isn’t?’ Chi Po, quite puzzled, replies “But what is there that isn’t?” [Smullyan, 1988, pp. 111112].
Smullyan quotes the student approvingly but my sympathies are with the sorcerer. Surely the answer to the boy’s question is . . . “What can be created!” — And I take Ijiri as my example. How did he create the ideas of tripleentry bookkeeping? I leave you with the mystery as follows: At a Conference on Creative and Innovative Management [Cooper, 1988, p. 60], I asked Ijiri how he came to have these ideas of tripleentry bookkeeping, after prefacing my questions with the statement that, like many others, I was aware as he of the basic connections between balance sheets and income statements that had been noted by many others since Pacioli first published his book on doubleentry bookkeeping nearly 500 years ago. If “it was there,” why didn’t I, or someone before me, see it? I think that the answer lies in Ijiri’s creativity — his ability to bring into existence things that weren’t there!
This still leaves open the question of why it took nearly 500 years to go from Pacioli to Ijiri despite the attention of many fine minds. Here I think the answer lies in the depth to which Ijiri had previously probed in his studies on the foundations of accounting, which finally led to his demonstration that all of accounting, including its multidimensional extensions, can be derived from three simple axioms which he refers to as the axioms of control, of quantities and of exchanges. Three simple axioms to cover all of private and public sector (e.g. national income) accounting is almost unbelievable, at least to me, when
I recall that Eric Kohler and I (working with David Rosenblatt, the logician) succeeded in formulating five axioms, with supplementary propositions, as published in Kohler’s Dictionary for Accountants [Kohler, 1952; pp. 4344], but were unable to demonstrate their inclusiveness. With his axiomiatization accomplishments we can say that Yuji Ijiri answers the “so what?” of his fatherinlaw (see citation) by showing the stuff of which accounting’s clothes are made. With his tripleentry bookkeeping, Ijiri has answered the “so what?” of his father (see citation) by opening new horizons of use for accounting — new uses that build on the foundations of the past.
In his accomplishments, our gentle inductee, Yuji Ijiri, represents the best traditions of the past while opening new prospects for the future in both accounting research and practice
REFERENCES
Raymond Smullyan, “What is there?” 5000 B.C. and other Philosophical fantasies, New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1988, Chapter 10, pp. 111112.
W. W. Cooper in “Area Introduction and Overview,” Y. Ijiri and R. L. Kuhn, Eds., New Directions in Creative and Innovative Management, Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1988, p. 60.
E. L. Kohler, A Dictionary for Accountants, First Edition, New York, NY: PrenticeHall, 1952, pp. 4344.
