Description: The topic of the paper is the challenge posed to rationalist and other philosophical views of childhood and early childhood education by the child study movement and other empiricist perspectives based on the study of young children at the end of the nineteenth century. The often polemical exchanges between figures like the psychologist, G. Stanley Hall and the Hegelian Froebelian, Susan Blow are analysed both in terms of their substantive content and from their sociological dimensions such as gender and their connections to professionalising processes and field formation. the rise to prominence and the careers of leading European figures in early childhood education, such as Margaret McMillan Maria Montessori and Ovide Decroly are considered in relation to their empirical observations and interest in the biological aspects of chilren's development as opposed to the previous focus on their moral development as exemplified in the work of the Froebelians. The purpose of the paper is to contribute further to our understanding of the rise of education as a disciplinary field and its institutionalisation in universities and colleges.The theoretical framework adopted draws upon Bourdieu's notions of field and cultural capital Methodology: The methodology is qualitative and the methods used are documentary analysis. The sources include texts by leading protaganists as well as journals including, Child Life, The Paidologist, Child Study and the Demonstration School Record. In addition, conference proceedings and offical policy documents have also been scrutinised. Conclusions: The main conclusion is that empirically based theories vanquished rationalist ones and came to dominate the institutions in which early childhood education was transmitted and the policies of states towards socially and economically disadvantaged children. Nevertheless, the binary opposition between rationalist and empiricist approaches, while useful at a high level of generality, tends to break down at a lower level where it becomes apparant that they never appear in a pure uncontaminated form. Empiricism, for example, was always open to the ingress of ideology and metaphysics, which shaped what was observed and how it was interpreted. So much so that the duality of fact and value can be observed even in one person. As was the case with Montessori.