Is the invention of accounting so useful that, as Charlie Munger once said, "you have to know accounting. It's the language of practical business life. It was a very useful thing to deliver to civilization. I've heard it came to civilization through Venice which of course was once the great commercial power in the Mediterranean"? (WOO 2013) This positive view on accounting can be contrasted with an opposing view by Paul Browne that "the recent [accounting] scandals have brought a new level of attention to the accounting profession as gatekeepers and custodians of social interest." (DUM 2013) Contrary to these opposing views (and other ones as will be discussed in the book), accounting (in relation to addition and subtraction) are neither possible (or impossible) nor desirable (or undesirable) to the extent that the respective ideologues (on different sides) would like us to believe. Of course, this reexamination of different opposing views on accounting does not mean that the study of addition and subtraction is useless, or that those fields (related to accounting)-like bookkeeping, auditing, forensics, info management, finance, philosophy of accounting, accounting ethics, lean accounting, mental accounting, environmental audit, creative accounting, carbon accounting, social accounting, and so on-are unimportant. (WK 2013) In fact, neither of these extreme views is plausible. Rather, this book offers an alternative (better) way to understand the future of accounting in regard to the dialectic relationship between addition and subtraction-while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other). More specifically, this book offers a new theory (that is, the double-sided theory of accounting) to go beyond the existing approaches in a novel way and is organized in four chapters. This seminal project will fundamentally change the way that we think about accounting in relation to addition and subtraction from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what I originally called its "post-human" fate.

Product Description: Are sports really supposed to be so competitive that, as Henry R. Sanders once famously said, Men, I'll be honest. Winning is...the only thing!? (WK 2012) This competitive view of sports can be contrasted with a critical view by William Shakespeare, who wrote in Othello (Act...read more

Product Description: Is waste (or trash) really so useless that, as William Faulkner once wrote, [r]ead everything trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. . . . If it is good, you ll find out. If it s not, throw it out the window ? (TE 2012) Interestingly, this critical view of waste (or trash) can be contrasted with an opposing observation by Isaac Bashevis Singer, who once famously said that the waste basket is the writer s best friend...read more

Product Description: Are the performing arts really supposed to be so radical that, as John Cage once said in the context of music, there is no noise, only sound, since he argued that any sounds we can hear can be music ? (WK 2007a; D. Harwood 1976) This radical tradition in performing arts, with music as an example here, can be contrasted with an opposing view in the older days, when Greek philosophers and medieval theorists in music defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies, and vertically as harmonies...read more

Product Description: This book provides an alternative (better) way to understand the future of architecture, especially in the dialectic context of form and function-while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other)...read more

Product Description: Is moral goodness really so desirable in the way that its proponents through the ages would like us to believe? For instance, in our time, there is even this latest version of the popular moral idea shared by many, when Dalai Lama suggested that "[w]e need these human values [of compassion and affection]...read more

Product Description: Is chess really so mechanical that it is, for some chess scholars nowadays, “a set of mathematical rules that obey basic laws of physics”—especially when the chess engine famously known as “IBM Deep Blue” beat the world chess champion Gary Kasparov in a series of chess matches in 1997?This popular chess sensibility can be contrasted by an opposing one in the older days, when many computer-skeptics “found it very, very hard to believe chess engines could ever replace or imitate the best of human chess thinking” or “believed the strongest human grandmasters would always be able to outplay computers when all tactics had been drained out of the position...read more