From Antithesis to Synthesis: Reinterpreting the Brian Holmes/Edmund King Dialectic

Abstract

The author reinterprets the work of two pioneers of methodology in comparative education, Brian Holmes and Edmund King. Where the two thinkers have tended to be understood as opposites, the author argues that this is not the case. Indeed, Holmes and King may be worth more together than apart, the systematic approach of the former complemented by the cultural sensitivities of the latter and vice versa. In this article, the two thinkers are understood, essentially, as anti-positivist liberals sympathetic to the ideas of Popper.