Subject: [HM] Italian accountants are reasonable people?
From: David Wilkins (dwilkins@maths.tcd.ie)
Date: Mon Sep 18 2000 - 11:38:16 EDT
Given that I have been recently more than usually active in posting
to this list, I hope that I may be permitted to pose my own trivia
question.
I have recently learned that, in Italian, a book-keeper or accountant
is 'un ragioniere' or 'una ragioniera' (depending on sex). Moreover
'la ragione' is 'reason', so that 'aver ragione' means 'to be right'.
Moreover I am given to understand that many standard accountancy
practices (such as double-entry book-keeping) originated in medieval
Italy.
Do these observations indicate anything about how accountants were
viewed within Italian society? Were those who kept the books
perceived primarily as people who were skilled at logical reason?
Were arithmetical skills and the ability to think clearly and reason
logically perhaps more closely identified with one another then than
perhaps they are in the present day?
David Wilkins
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