John lockes theory of tabula rasa definition

Tabula rasa (Latin: "scraped tablet," though often translated "blank slate") is the notion, popularized by John Locke, that the human mind receives knowledge and forms itself based on experience alone, without any pre-existing innate ideas that would serve as a starting point.

Tabula rasa thus implies that individual human beings are born "blank" (with no built-in mental content), and that their identity is defined entirely by their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world.

In general terms, the contention that we start life literally “from scratch” can be said to imply a one-sided emphasis on empiricism over idealism.

History of the notion

In the fourth century B.C.E., Aristotle originated the idea in De Anima.

However, besides some arguments by the Stoics and Peripatetics, the Aristotelian notion of the mind as a blank state went much unnoticed for nearly 1,800 years, though it reappears in a slightly different wording in the wri