E.E. Fournier d’Albe’s Fin de siècle: Science,Nationalism and Monistic Philosophy in Britain and Ireland

The fin de siècle witnessed radical shifts in the intellectual and cultural landscapes of the British Isles in the context of a general revolt against Victorian values. E. E. Fournier d’Albe – physicist, spiritualist, inventor and Pan-Celticist – personified the ability of intellectuals to latch onto and advance new trends, made available by the emergent intellectual pluralism. Like many contemporaries he rejected traditional religion, but he also disdained scientific materialism, and sought a deeper metaphysical meaning to life, pursued through his various interests. Influenced by the totalising theories of figures like Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel, Fournier concocted his own brand of scientific monism, rejecting materialism, embracing spiritualism, and ever optimistic in the notion of scientific progress, even in the wake of the carnage of the Great War. The article aims to give Fournier a fuller historical treatment, allowing his story to add to understanding of the milieus in which he lived and operated, and revealing how his monistic philosophy incorporated some of the disparate cultural strands explored by intellectuals in the fin de siècle reaction against conventional Victorian ideals.     

Learning through culture: seeking “critical case studies of possibilities” in the history of education

Abstract

In Radical Education and the Common School (2011), Michael Field and Peter Moss argue for a radical alternative to the failed and dysfunctional contemporary discourse about education and the school with its focus on markets, competition, instrumentality, standardisation, and managerialism. They argue that it is necessary, if we are to progress “social alternatives” in education, to construct micro-histories of schools that have developed as “real utopias” through radically revising their practice. They call these micro-histories “critical case studies of possibilities”. In To Hell with Culture (1963), the art educator and anarchist Herbert Read returned to a theme he had been exploring since the early 1930s – the purpose of education. For him, “education” implied many things, but he saw modern practice as “socially disintegrating”. Instead, Read offered an alternative to the dominant discourse about education under capitalism in the 1960s which would create “that collective consciousness which is the spiritual energy of a people and the only source of its art and culture”. To what extent was Read’s conception of education an ideal, a dream unfulfilled? Following Fielding and Moss this paper will seek to trace “critical case studies of possibilities” drawn from the past which reflect the fundamental connection identified by Read between school learning, “collective consciousness”, art, and culture.