Linking Pacioli's double-entry bookkeeping, algebra, and art: accounting history or idle speculation?

This commentary responds to the speculations of Dean, Clarke, and Capalbo about the interconnections between double-entry bookkeeping (DEB) and Pacioli's emphasis on proportion, harmony, and balance. To make our speculations more than merely .idle., we must do the hard work of constructing plausible hypotheses and testing them. I appreciate the hard work, scholarly skills, and dedication underlying the production of the authors. speculation, nonetheless, we still need the hard work of theory and empirical research to explain DEB and verify the links between it and its intellectual, economic, social, and political context.