Tabula Rasa & Psychology

Human development has intrigued thinkers for thousands of years.

The question of how people come to be who they are, of how the human mind develops, has exercised philosophers since ancient times. Thinkers have taken extremely different views. Some have stressed heredity, underscoring supposedly innate traits. Others have emphasized what people acquire through experience, discounting heredity even so far as to suggest that every child enters the world as a tabula rasa.

Definition

"Tabula rasa" means "erased tablet" in Latin. The 17th-century English philosopher John Locke used this term to describe the infant's mind at birth, observes David Myers in his book, "Psychology." Pondering the origins of human knowledge in his essay "Concerning Human Understanding," Locke supposed the infant's mind to be as white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas. Wondering how the mind came to be furnished, he answered: experience.

Debate

Psychologists have questioned the extent to which the newborn's mind is a tabula rasa as opposed to a notebook already teeming with instructions---instructions composed in the alphabet of the genes. Sometimes called the nature-versus-nurture debate, this clash of perspectives has inspired illuminating research, as noted in "Human Development" by Diane E. Papalia et al. It has also cast grave doubt on Locke's supposition.

Heredity

Weighing the influence of experience against that of genetic inheritance, scientists have studied the development of identical twins and fraternal twins. Identical twins issue from the same fertilized egg and therefore possess exactly the same genes, whereas fraternal twins arise from separate eggs, bearing no more genetic similarity than do ordinary siblings, observes Donna Wong et al. in "Maternal Child Nursing Care." Twin studies reveal startling similarities between identical twins---similarities that are not present between fraternal twins---thereby suggesting a strong hereditary basis for many psychological characteristics, note Papalia et al.

Experience

On the other hand, Locke's belief in the power of experience to shape the young mind finds evidentiary support too. Children from impoverished environments, if given stimulating infant care, score better on intelligence tests at age 12, notes Myers. Even considering differences in income and education, children who grow up in homes that include fathers are less likely to develop certain psychological and social pathologies than children without fathers, Myers points out.

Conclusion

The findings of psychology falsify the tabula rasa supposition. But if the newborn's mind is no blank tablet on which experience may write whatever it will, neither is it a detailed set of directives engraved in stone. What a person becomes depends on the interaction between heredity and experience. It may, moreover, reflect something else as well, something separate from either nature or nurture. As Myers observes, people influence their own development---by the choices they make.

References

• "Psychology, Sixth Edition"; David G. Myers; 2001
• "Great Books of the Western World, Volume 35"; Robert M. Hutchins, Editor; 1952
• "Human Development, Eighth Edition"; Diane E. Papalia, Sally Wendkos Olds, and Ruth Duskin Feldman; 2001
• "Maternal Child Nursing Care, Second Edition"; Donna Wong, S. Perry, and M. Hockenberry; 2002