When babies are born, they already know many important and surprising things about objects, people and language. Babies also easily and naturally solve new problems that are far beyond the abilities of the most powerful computers. They think, make predictions, look for explanations and even do experiments. As adults we have the capacity to do science because we were once babies. We have this curiosity that in children is called play.
Scientists just have bigger and more expensive toys.
It's not that children are little scientists but that scientists are big children. The new science, showing incredible learning earlier than we thought, is playing a vital role in the debates. For humans, nurture is our nature and the drive to learn is our most important and vital instinct.