Werner Sombart's views on the connection between double-entry bookkeeping and the rise of capitalism are well known and have been influential. In recent decades other views – independent of Sombart's – claiming historical significance for double entry have also been published. Three of these disparate claims are considered in this article: the connection between double entry and Manichaeism; the influence of the rhetoric of double entry; and double entry and the recognition in Western Europe of zero as a number.
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B. S. Yamey (2005) studied this question.
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