ABSTRACT
For some people a great deal is natural to humans; for others nothing at all, or at any rate nothing that matters. The new-born infant may respond in certain ways to sights, sounds, inner sensations of hunger and so on. But these 'natural' reactions are immediately responded to and thereby, it is said, shaped by the infant's caretakers. Without those caretakers the infant would die. So-called wolf children have always been minimally cared for and hence socialized before they are abandoned to their fate. They can tell us nothing about human nature. Rather more promising as a source of evidence for claims about human nature are those children who are unable to experience the natural or social world through one or more of the five senses. Yet despite their handicaps, blind children will draw and deaf children seek to communicate through invented signs with their hearing caretakers.
