The Macintosh et al. (2000)-Mattessich (2003) debate encouraged one of the most exciting enthusiasms about accounting methodological aspects. Participants in the demanding task of thinking it philosophically not only have the rigor of the constructs and arguments of modern philosophy of science, but exercise the inevitable task of extending and take into account developments of consequences that had not been foreseen before de debate. The Macintosh team applied the postmodernism view to accounting, and Mattessich has responded with external realism and a systematic redefinition of accounting as an applied science. The current paper evaluates the Mattessich teleological approach as a methodological basis of accounting. Given this sui generis condition of accounting, problems of representation should be considered differently than the ones of any paradigmatic science. Facing the holistic treatment of accounting problems, Mattessich segments problems and constructs, takes away universal privileges from accounting and subordinates them to purposes.