Infant Mortality as a Potential Measure of Community Health in Urban Growth

This document is one of a series which contains the results of research carried out during a 1969 Summer Study of Urban Decentralization at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. The summary of the Summer Study is contained in "An Introduction to Urban Decentralization Research," ORNL-HUD-3.

Tabula rasa

English philosopher John Locke proposed that the mind of the newborn infant is a tabula rasa, or blank slate, on which experience writes. Locke was an empiricist. Development, in the empiricist view, is the product of an active environment operating on a passive mind. One alternative to empiricism is nativism. Nativists propose that the human genetic heritage includes knowledge accumulated over the course of evolution. Thus the mind of the newborn, far from being a blank slate, represents the knowledge of generations. Development, in the nativist view, is a maturational process directed by the genes. It is genes, not environments, that account for developmental change.