In my previous post regarding the nature-nurture/actuality-potentiality
debate, I may have overstated what I intended to say. I don't want to give
the mis-impression that psychohistorians believe in a modified version of
the tabula rasa theory of human consciousness or that they are some kind
of reconstructed behaviorists where any and every behavior can be
imprinted onto the brain. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Robert Godwin implicitly grasps the nature of the issue when he writes:
"I have a pet pit bull that I could have easily trained into an aggressive
attack dog. The gene was there but the environment wasn't; yes, the dog is
still aggressive, but aggressively friendly, aggressiviely playful,
aggressively curious, etc."

As Chomsky, they believe there is an inherent structure of the brain
capable of great creativity. The question is: how and why the creativity
is manifested in the particular ways that it is.  When I refer to
creativity, I am referring to rudimentary levels of creativity, like
participating in a dialogue or interior monologue or gleaning subtext from
a text or even understanding a joke or planning for your future or coming
to grips with your past. It is through this latter window of inquiry that
led the psychohistorians to study the birth experience and child-rearing
modes.


Crk