DDR-ARCV / 001Doordoorium

An idea · Early Modern · first attested 1689

Tabula Rasa

The mind at birth is a blank slate, written on by experience.

Locke against the rationalists. There are no innate ideas; the mind is born empty and is furnished by sensation and reflection on sensation. The view has consequences far beyond epistemology: it implies that humans are radically equal at birth and that differences in capacity are differences in education and circumstance.