Luca Pacioli and Leonardo DaVinci: Domestic Partners

Luca Pacioli and Leonardo DaVinci--Renaissance men--were both mathematical geniuses. Leonardo was more inclined towards military engineering, while Luca towards abstract and pure math. When Pacioli included "Double Entry Bookkeeping" in his textbook, Summa de Aritmetica, which he published in 1494 (two years after Christopher Columbus landed in Santo Domingo), little did he know he would change the world. Leonardo Da Vinci and a monk named Luca Pacioli--the inventor of Accounting (debits and credits), lived together for many years. Luca's math textbook contained the basic notions that accountants follow today: Assets equal liabilities plus owner's equity (A=L + OE); and profit equals revenues less expenses (P=R-E) Both being college professors travelled together and stayed together at different universities. Sigmund Freud—in his study on Leonardo’s homosexuality— ignored this fact. It is a pity because Freud would have brought out factual evidence rather than speculations based on his physchoanalitic techniques. Leonardo, being much younger than Luca, has always been described at Luca's protege. The diagrams and figures one sees in Luca'a Summa were DaVinci'a drawings. They worked together as equal partners rather than the master-apprentice relations of the times. Today with time perspective we can understand they had a homosexual relationship; in 1495 they lived together in Venice. History shows that Leonardo was summoned to court to address charges of homosexuality against him. Since the accuser did not show up, the charges were later dropped. While billions of human beings have populated the earth, mostly living in the shadow of survival and mediocrity, the odd, the strange, and the eccentric are the ones who make the most invaluable contributions to the improvement of the human condition. These two eccentrics did make tangible contributions to mankind. While Leonardo's accomplishments have been chronicled and documented--even Bill Gates couldn't resist owning Leonardo's original manuscripts--Luca's contributions are less known. Like our American composer Aaron Copland, I will play a fanfare for the common man: Luca by his ingenious explanation of Double Entry Bookkeeping system made possible international commerce, opening the flood-gates to what today we call "The Global Economy." No longer were businesses confined within frontiers, as banks, financial institutions, entrepreneus, and corporations, bartered, exchanged, and extracted profits across frontiers. The standardization of Financial Statements followed, so that Balance Sheets, Income Statements, and Cash Flows are read and interpreted without major impediments all over the Orbe. Yes it was a leap of imagination to design Debits (left side) and credits (right side) as an information system. But this humble discovery made Capitalism the dominant economic system in our day and age. Through business medical coverage plans man can now enjoy the latest technologies and thereby live longer. One can well imagine Luca and Leonardo discussing symmetries, constrasts, dichotomies, dualities, binary oppositions, polarities, antithesis, and other opposites: "Physical nature exhibits all these dualities," Luca would say. "And so does human nature," would Leonardo retort. "We carry good and evil, love and hatred, in our spirits and bodies--or as Heraclytus loved to say:'the way up is the way down, the narrow and the wide." "What about Ecclesiastes, Leonardo--didn't he say...?" a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to pull down and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time for mourning and a time for dancing; ... The observation of these doubles as a system of knowledge permitted Luca to expand it into the Accounting equation where what is on the left must equal what is on the right side (Assets = Liabilities + Owner's Equity). Writers such as Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Dickens maximized the use of antithesis; hence their great literature. In A Tale of Two Citites Dickens opens his novel with a detailed set of antheses: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way-- Although philosophers such as Hegel and Karl Marx attempted to discard the antinomial system by replacing it with a triad: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. They failed; and we can understand why: Hegel professed the State's power, while Marx communism. By now we know the chaotic results of Nazism and Communism. The natural tendency is duality as proved by the Second Law of thermodynamics: order and chaos (enthropy). Though Nature tends to chaos, human natures imposes order; the mind invents patterns of understanding. The Double entry Bookkeeping system is a triumph of the mind over the chaotic activities of humans engaged in trade. Luca's legacy--accounting system--to the business world is order. It contains: Balance,wholeness, and radiance, because his system dovetails with Democracy, with Freedom to the entrepreneur; a system that coincides with Adam Smith's pillars of capitalism: Laissez-faire (free market economy), competition (Invisible Hand), and the Division of labor (the innate human propensity that creates wealth for all). This is my fanfare to the common man--Luca Pacioli. Ch1 Accounting in Action Ch2 Recording Process Ch3 Adjusting the Accounts Ch4 Completing the Accounting Cycle Ch5 Merchandising Operations Ch6 Inventories Ch7 Accounting Information Systems Ch8 Internal Control and Cash Ch9 Accounting for Receivables Ch10 PP&E, Natural Resources, and Intangible Assets Ch11 Current Liabilities and Payroll Ch12 Partnerships Ch13 Corporations Ch14 Corporations:Dividends, RE Ch15 Long Term Liabilities Ch16 Investment Ch17 Statement of Cash Flows Ch18 Financial Statement Analysis Plato and Accounting Price/Earnings Ratio Plant Assets Luca Pacioli and DaVinci The secrets of 'no-doze' prose: Mary Duffy's Sentence Openers

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