Exclusive: read a chapter of The Blank Slate

"Blank slate" is a loose translation of the medieval Latin term tabula rasa, literally, "scraped tablet." It is commonly attributed to the 17th century philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), though in fact he used a different metaphor. Here is the famous passage from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding:

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE.

Locke was aiming at contemporary theories of innate ideas in which people are born with concepts such as God, mathematical ideals, and eternal truths. His alternative theory, empiricism, was intended both as a theory of psychology-how the mind works-and as a theory of epistemology-how we come to know the truth. Both goals helped to motivate his political philosophy, often honored as the foundation of liberal democracy. Locke opposed dogmatic justifications for the political status quo, such as the authority of the church and the divine right of kings, which had been touted as self-evident truths. He argued that social arrangements should be reasoned out from scratch and agreed upon by mutual consent, based on knowledge that any person could acquire.

Since ideas are grounded in experience, which vary from person to person, differences of opinion arise not because one mind is equipped to grasp the truth and another is defective, but because the two minds had different histories. Those differences therefore ought to be tolerated rather than suppressed. The Blank Slate also undermined a hereditary royalty and aristocracy, whose members could claim no innate wisdom or merit if their minds had started out as blank as everyone else's. It also spoke against the institution of slavery, because slaves could no longer be thought of as innately inferior or subservient.

In the twentieth century the Blank Slate set the agenda for much of the social sciences and humanities. As we shall see, psychology has sought to explain all of thought, feeling, and behavior with a few simple mechanisms of learning. The social sciences have sought to explain social customs arrangements as a product of the socialization of children by the surrounding culture: a system of words, images, stereotypes, role models, and contingencies of reward and punishment. A long and growing list of concepts that would seem natural to the human way of thinking (emotions, kinship, the sexes, illness, nature, the world), are now said to have been "invented" or "socially constructed."

The Blank Slate has also served as a sacred scripture for political and ethical beliefs. Any differences we see among races, ethnic groups, sexes, and individuals come not from differences In their innate constitution but from differences in their experiences. Change the experiences-by reforming parenting, education, the media, and social rewards-and you can change the person. Underachievement, poverty, and antisocial behavior can be ameliorated; indeed, it is irresponsible not to do so. And discrimination on the basis of purportedly inborn traits of a sex or ethnic group is simply irrational.

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? Penguin Books Limited 2002