Tabula Rasa. This Latin term means literally "blank tablet." The concept that the mind, having no "innate ideas," begins like a blank tablet awaiting experience to etch impressions upon it is one that John Locke enunciated in opposition to Descartes. The notion, however, was not entirely original with Locke. Duns Scotus, the last of the three great 13th-c. schoolmen, had held that the mind is a tabula nuda ("naked tablet") until it has experience. Bon aventure, also a 13th-c. schoolman, held this view too, although he excepted certain ideas (.e.g., the idea of God) as innate.

Geddes MacGregor, Dictionary of Religion and Philosophy, New York: Paragon House, 1989