RSS feedsSo, for instance, the ancients explained the motion of the sun, moon and stars by conceiving a notion that they were connected to “crystalline spheres” surrounding the earth. It quickly became apparent that the five planets – the “wandering stars” – then known needed a sphere each, too.
More detailed observations of the sky revealed that some of these spheres had to be connected to yet other spheres, to explain the movement of the sun throughout the year and the wayward movement of the planets. Soon there were 27 spheres – then 34, then 56, then 72. It all started to get more complicated than the observations they were trying “to render uniform and coherent”.
Ptolemy developed a system of “Eccentric Spheres”, “Epicycles” and a great “Equalizing Circle”. Others argued that there weren’t any such crystalline spheres but rather that the heavens were filled with a “fluid ether”.
Then came Copernicus and, as Smith wrote, “When you have convinced the world, that an established system ought to be corrected, it is not very difficult to persuade them that it should be destroyed.” And so was born the shocking notion that the sun was the centre of the universe, not the earth. Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter and conducted important experiments involving falling objects, while Kepler found that the orbits were elliptical, not circular. Isaac Newton found that not even the earth was perfectly spherical, but was actually fatter at the equator. Today we have black holes, dark matter, string theory and ten – or is it 11? – dimensions. It’s all getting very complicated.
A bit like the history of accounting standards, then. Historic cost accounting was gradually “improved” with all sorts of new rules, SSAPs, FRSs, UITFs, property revaluations, different ways of accounting for acquisitions or foreign currencies and (briefly) monetary working capital adjustments. International accounting standards threw out the old system to try to reflect a “uniform and coherent” picture of business reality. But as our survey reveals, the complexity of it all is such that they succeed mostly to “embarrass and confound the imagination”.
