As put in Stoic teaching..."inborn ideas are part of the soul's
inheritance from that universal reason of which the soul is
a fragment."
[Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Stoics," p. 861.]
Comment: We humans have ideas popping into our minds
nearly non-stop. That's part of the human condition. On the
other hand, we more than often don't concentrate enough
on most of these ideas. Often, too, a lot of the ideas that
meet our minds seem fragmented, not altogether, not concise.
There's also the environment in which these ideas form.
Our minds vary. Some are well-honed, others impoverished,
and most are likely preoccupied with our everyday living and
occasionally with the immediate issues of survival. So--inborn
ideas are not always planted in fertile ground.
When such precious ideas do match with a complimentary
environment, it's then that sometimes the idea grows from
immediate comprehension unto a profitable thought unto,
maybe, an actuality.
There are some today, both in theology and in science, who
theorize that ours is both an inner/outer universe. Like ourselves,
the universe possesses both a "without" and a "within." Some
of these theorists ponder that perhaps innate ideas are a product
of an implicate order that somehow thrusts these ideas outward
into the explicate order of the universe.
Again, theorizing, but such scholars feel that it is very important
that we connect more and more, better and better, with these
inborn ideas. They are coming from "within" and need to be
met in the "without."
If these theories are anywhere near being correct, what would
be the significance of this process? We could employ a religious
perspective, presuming that these ideas are coming from God.
But harkening more to the idea of a Universal Reason, perhaps
inborn ideas are simply part of the natural process--in which the
ideas have always been in existence in the Macrocosm and
slip forth into microcosmic forms when they have reached an
evolutionary point wherein they can receive and perhaps cope
with these ideas. Perhaps inborn ideas are meant to be the
building-blocks of cosmic development?
