What is a blank slate?

Have you ever looked closely at a tiny, squishy newborn baby and wondered... what is actually going on inside their head? Are they thinking, or is their brain totally empty? Join Mira and Finn on Philosophy is Not Boring for a mind-bending puzzle! In 1689, an English philosopher named John Locke argued that babies are born knowing absolutely nothing. He called their minds a "Tabula Rasa" or a blank slate, like an empty piece of white paper waiting to be filled with everything they see, taste, and touch! But jump ahead almost 300 years, and a linguist named Noam Chomsky says that can't be entirely true! He noticed that toddlers learn tricky grammar rules way too fast to be starting from scratch. Chomsky believed we are actually born with a built-in "app" in our brains for language! So, which is it? Are you a totally blank page, or did you arrive with an invisible instruction manual already written inside you? Discover the incredible Nature vs. Nurture debate, find out why identical twins can be so spooky, and see if you can ace our fun trivia quiz!