Tabula Rasa in Locke and Aquinas

[Petersean]

My recollection from college and high school history courses was that John Locke is associated with the idea of the mind as a tabula rasa. Further, it seems to be my recollection that this idea and Locke are substantially credited with the rise of modern science during the Enlightenment because the idea of the "blank slate" privileged empirical knowledge and seemed to lift the burden of original sin from human kind.

But last night, my Communio group was reading Question 84 of the Summa Theologica and I was stunned to see in Article 3 the following:

On the contrary, The Philosopher, speaking of the intellect, says (De Anima iii, 4) that it is like "a tablet on which nothing is written."

I answer that, Since form is the principle of action, a thing must be related to the form which is the principle of an action, as it is to that action: for instance, if upward motion is from lightness, then that which only potentially moves upwards must needs be only potentially light, but that which actually moves upwards must needs be actually light. Now we observe that man sometimes is only a potential knower, both as to sense and as to intellect. And he is reduced from such potentiality to act--through the action of sensible objects on his senses, to the act of sensation--by instruction or discovery, to the act of understanding. Wherefore we must say that the cognitive soul is in potentiality both to the images which are the principles of sensing, and to those which are the principles of understanding. For this reason Aristotle (De Anima iii, 4) held that the intellect by which the soul understands has no innate species, but is at first in potentiality to all such species.

So, it seems that Aristotle and Aquinas both held to the idea of the tabula rasa of the human mind...which probably shouldn't have been all that a surprise given what the prior questions of the Summa say about the source of knowledge.

I was just surprised at how blatantly the tabula rasa idea is phrased by someone before Locke.

So, a few questions:

First, has anyone else had the experience of being led to believe that the idea of the tabula rasa of the human mind was original with Locke?

Second, why is Locke so associated with the idea if it was pretty much accepted by medieval and ancient philosophers?

[furor]

I didn't know this either, for my own part, but it doesn't entirely surprise me. There is much that has been developed in the work of such men but which is doomed to languish in obscurity until it's popularised by some later troublemaker (begging the pardon of Mr. Locke, of course).

It's like the situation that exists concerning the panopticon. I can't count the number of times I've heard my colleagues refer glowingly to "Foucault's idea of the panopticon" only to stare blankly when asked about Jeremy Bentham. I've heard that the same thing is happening with Bentham's "fictions" being appropriated by Ayn Rand under the name of "anti-concepts," but I haven't read her very much so I can't speak from any great experience. In both cases, though, I find it about as frustrating as it is amusing.

And then there's this passage from the Physics of Aristotle that a friend pointed out to me recently...

Why not suppose, then, that the same is true of the parts of natural organisms? On this view, it is of necessity that, for example, the front teeth grow sharp and well adapted for biting, and the back ones broad and useful for chewing food; this useful result was coincidental, not what they were for. The same will be true of all the other parts that seem to be for something. On this view, then, whenever all the parts came about coincidentally as though they were for something, these animals survived, since their constitution, though coming about by chance, made them suitable for survival. Other animals, however, were differently constituted and so were destroyed; indeed they are still being destroyed, as Empedocles says of the man-headed calves.

Aristotle goes on, however:

This argument, then, and others like it, might puzzle someone. In fact, however, it is impossible for things to be like this.

Oh well.

Still, good to hear this about Aquinas.