Form Perception Without Past 
Experience
Robert Fantz at the University 
of Chicago showed that chicks 
tended to peck at oval shapes -- 
the shape of grain -- more 
frequently than at other 
shapes.  Therefore, the chicks  
must perceive form from birth, 
and not on the basis of past 
experience.

What evidence is there that 
form perception is, in fact, 
innate? The most direct way to 
answer this question would be 
to study individuals who were 
born blind and later gained 
their sight. The philosopher 
William Molyneux asked 
precisely this question in a 
1706 letter to John Locke:

    Suppose a man born blind, 
    and now adult, and taught by 
    his touch to distinguish 
    between a cube and a sphere of 
    the same metal, and nighly of 
    the same bigness, so as to tell, 
    when he felt one and the 
    other, which is the cube, 
    which the sphere. Suppose 
    then the cube and sphere be 
    placed on a table, and the blind 
    man be made to see: query, 
    whether by his sight, before he 
    touched them he could now 
    distinguish and tell which is 
    the globe, which the cube?