“Tabula rasa” is the theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content. All their knowledge comes from experience and perception.
The proponents of the Tabula rasa thesis favor the “nurture” side of the Nature vs Nurture debate, when it comes to aspects of one’s personality, social and emotional behavior, and intelligence.
The term in Latin equivalent to the English “blank slate” or “erased slate”. The word comes from the Roman tabula the wax tablet used for writing notes. The writings were erased or “blanked” by heating the wax and then smoothing it to give a tabula rasa.
Traces of the idea that came to be called the tabula rasa appear as early as the writings of Aristotle. He wrote the first textbook of Psychology in De Anima or On the Soul, Book III, chapter 4.
However the notion of the mind as a blank slate went largely unnoticed for more than 1,000 years.
In the 11th century, the theory of tabula rasa was developed more clearly by the Islamic philosopher, Ibn Sina. He argued that the “human intellect at birth is rather like a tabula rasa, a pure potentiality that is actualized through education and comes to know”.
The knowledge is attained through familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts.
This is developed through a syllogistic method of reasoning; ” Observations lead to prepositional statements, which when compounded lead to further abstract concepts.”
He further argued that the intellect itself “possesses levels of development from the material intellect, that potentiality can acquire knowledge to the active intellect. The state of the human intellect at conjunction with the perfect source of knowledge.”
In the 12th century, Ibn Tufail demonstrated the theory of tabula rasa as a thought experiment. He depicted the development of the mind of a feral child from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society, on a desert island through experience alone.
The translation of his novel entitled Philosophus Autodidactus, published in 1671, had an influence on John Locke’s formulation of tabula rasa in An Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Tabula rasa is also featured in the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud. He depicted personality traits as being formed by family dynamics.
Freud’s theories imply that humans lack free will, but also that genetic influences on human personality are minimal. In psychoanalysis, one is largely determined by one’s upbringing.
Tabula rasa is also used by 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau in order to support his argument that warfare is an advent of society and agriculture, rather than something that occurs from the human state of nature.
Since tabula rasa states that humans are born with a “blank-slate” Rousseau uses this to suggest that humans must learn warfare.
The tabula rasa concept became popular in social sciences in the 20th century. The idea that genes (or simply “blood”) determined character took on racist overtones.
By the 1970s, some scientists had come to see gender identity as socially constructed rather than rooted in genetics – a concept still current although strongly contested.
This swing of the pendulum accompanied suspicion of innate differences in general and a propensity to “manage” society, where the real power must be – if people are really born blank.