7517
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I could take a healthy infant and train it up to be any type of specialist I choose [Watson,JB]
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Full Idea:
Give me a dozen healthy infants, and my own specified world to bring them up in, and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select - doctor, artist, beggar, thief - regardless of his ancestry.
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From:
J.B. Watson (Behaviorism [1924], Ch.2), quoted by Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate
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A reaction:
This was a famous pronouncement rejecting the concept of human nature as in any way fixed - a total assertion of nurture over nature. Modern research seems to be suggesting that Watson is (alas?) wrong.
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16746
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Principles of things are not hidden features of forms, but the laws by which they were formed [Newton]
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Full Idea:
The (active) principles I consider not as occult qualities, supposed to result from the specific forms of things, but as general laws of nature, by which the things themselves are formed.
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From:
Isaac Newton (Queries to the 'Opticks' [1721], q 31), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.6
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A reaction:
This is the external, 'imposed' view of laws (with the matter passive) at its most persuasive. If laws arise out the stuff (as I prefer to think), what principles went into the formulation of the stuff?
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