1. Tabula Rasa. The idea that the child's mind is
initially a tabula rasa, a clean slate, was put forward
by John Locke, but it would appear that in this matter
Locke's thinking was influenced by that of the French
philosopher Gassendi. Both these writers were engaged
in a polemic against Descartes' notion of innate ideas,
and argued that all ideas derive ultimately from sensory
experience. Locke in his Essay concerning Human
Understanding (1689, Book I) held that, to start with,
the mind is a blank and that with time impressions
are formed upon it so that a basis is steadily created
for the whole of the individual's mental life. Some
suggestion of an initial tabula rasa may be traced back
at least to Saint Thomas Aquinas (in his dictum “noth-
ing is in the mind which was not first in the senses,”
De Trinitate, I, 3), but it was Locke who developed
the so-called empiricist view, viz., that the mind is
passive in learning, and that ideas gradually become
imprinted upon it, whereby it becomes “stocked” with
experience. The child's early experience is sensory, and
reflection (thinking) develops with maturation out of
such sensory learning. However, Locke's own interest
lay primarily in the character of the mature mind
rather than in the processes of mental development.
In contrast, the topic of early learning was the main
theme of the essay, Émile, or On Education, by Jean
Jacques Rousseau (1712-78). Like Locke, Rousseau
argued that the human infant, though born with the
ability to learn, has initially no innate ideas. Experi-
ence, according to him, could account for all knowl-
edge; and since animals have senses, they, too, could
acquire knowledge. One of the first things that the
human infant learns is that he is powerless and de-
pendent upon the adult who cares for him. While the
notion of tabula rasa focused on the impressionability
of, and “exposure learning” by, the child, the emphasis
on the infant's dependency pointed to what very much
later came to be called instrumental learning. Rousseau
believed that early training could mold the child com-
pletely; in his belief in the efficacy of early education
he went too far, but he was quite right to emphasize
the initial pliability of the infant.
