The term Tabula Rasa was coined by John Locke in 1689, in one of his most famous works An Essay Concerning Human understanding where he said that the human brain can be likened to a blank slate, because we only start interpreting and filling it with ideas as we experience the world through our 5 senses.
While he does have a point, it can be argued that we are not born empty, at least not as far as our brains are concerned. It has emerged that we have anything between 5 to 21 recognised senses. The five senses model is obviously based on where the sensory nerves are located in our bodies, while the 20 sense model looks at specialised cell types, signals that activate them and the responses triggered Learn.genetis
Based on this we can deduce that babies in the womb are able to store information. For instance, research has shown that talking to a child who is about 6 months in the womb or playing them music causes them to identify those same sounds upon birth. Similarly, violence and stress situations get received as well, and it’s said that high stress level do cause a baby to get born with smaller brain sizes.
So can we then conclude that the children we bring forth are not exactly blank, they already carry information encoded in them from the womb. Also, if God has a purpose for us and a reason why He put us here, did we come empty? (of course we did come empty in the sense that we were born naked, but you know what I mean)
So what say you? Are we blank slates?
Wanjiru Mbuthia
Word of Life – Media team
