tabula rasa (blank slate)

n. Term originated by the 17th-century philosopher John Locke. Locke's idea was that an infant is born with its mind/brain a total blank slate, upon which is written its life experience. One variant of this nurture-only approach was B. F. Skinner's mid-20th-century description of the mind/brain as a “black box” which receives the conditioning and reinforcements of an individual's life. This position postulates that nurture, not nature (i.e. genetics and biology), is responsible for the personal, social, and cognitivedevelopment of the person. Today, the commonly accepted position among psychologists is that nature and nurture are inextricably interwoven, each continuously contributing to human development over the entire life span. – VS