[...] in short, empiricist speculation has characteristically assumed that only the procedures and mechanisms for the acquisition of knowledge constitute an innate property of the mind. Thus for Hume, the method of "experimental reasoning" is a basic instinct in animals and humans, on a par with the instinct "which teaches a bird, with such exactness, the art of incubation, and the whole economy and order of its nursery" - it is derived "from the original hand of nature" [...] The form of knowledge, however, is otherwise quite free.
- Chomsky (1969), a pag.51