The nature/nuture or Rationalist/Empricist debate has been going on a long time. This is kind of strange considering almost everyone who addresses always says that personally they think it’s a little from column A and a little from column B. Not like their opponents in the other camp who are clearly all about column A or all about column B.
But this one of the best metaphors i’ve come across for rethinking innateness:
Empirics are like ants who gather and use; Dogmatics are like spiders who spin webs out of themselves. The bee is the true middle way: it gathers material from garden and field flowers and then with the faculties proper to her, she turns and digests.
Francis Bacon, Novum Organum(1620)
i like that thanks..