"Those who contend that knowledge results wholly from the experiences of the individual, ignoring as they do the mental evolution which accompanies the autogeno

"Those who contend that knowledge results wholly from the experiences of the individual, ignoring as they do the mental evolution which accompanies the autogenous development of the nervous system, fall into an error as great as if they were to ascribe all bodily growth and structure to exercise, forgetting the innate tendency to assume the adult form. Were the infant born with a full-sized and completely-constructed brain, their position would be less untenable. But, as the case stands, the gradually-increasing intelligence displayed throughout childhood and youth is more attributable to the completion of the cerebral organization than to the individual experiences -- a truth proved by the fact that in adult life there is sometimes displayed a high endowment of some faculty which, during education, was never brought into play. "Doubtless, experiences received by the individual furnish the concrete materials for all thought. Doubtless, the organized and semiorganized arrangements existing among the cerebral nerves can give no knowledge until there has been a presentation of the external relations to which they correspond. And doubtless the child's daily observations and reasonings aid the formation of those involved nervous connections that are in process of spontaneous evolution; just as its daily gambols aid the development of its limbs. But saying this is quite a different thing from saying that its intelligence is wholly produced by its experiences. That is an utterly inadmissible doctrine -- a doctrine which makes the presence of a brain meaningless -- a doctrine which makes idiocy unaccountable." - William James, The Principles of Psychology, 1890 (though he is quoting Herbert Spencer here) I wonder if anyone has improved on this view in the century-plus since it was published?