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Philosophies · Philosophers · List of lists Tabula rasa (Latin:
"scraped tablet", though often translated "blank slate") is the
notion that individual human beings are born "blank" (with no
built-in mental content), and that their identity is defined
entirely by events after birth. However, two uses of the term in
modern usage are fundamentally incongruent. Thomas Aquinas was
the first to assert the tabula rasa theory in the 13th century,
though it was John Locke who fully expressed the idea in the
17th century. In John Locke's philosophy, tabula rasa was the
theory that the (human) mind is at birth a "blank slate" without
rules for processing data, and that data is added and rules for
processing are formed solely by