Cognitive science is the study of the mind and intelligence. It is interdisciplinary and includes philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and anthropology. The origin of this science began in the mid-1950s when various researchers developed theories of mind, which were based procedures that were very complex and computational.

An organization of cognitive scientist was formed in the mid-1970s when the Cognitive Science Society was formed along with an accompanying journal, Cognitive Science. Universities throughout the world have created cognitive science courses and programs.

Since the time of the Ancient Greeks, philosophers and others attempted to understand the human mind and the nature of human knowledge. The mind became the center of philosophy until the nineteenth century, which was when experimental psychology developed. Mental operations were ten studied more systematically, which later led into behaviorism. At this point, the existence of the mind was mostly denied, meaning the brain itself had little to do with behavior.

However, in the mid-1950s, things began to change for scientists who wished to study the mind. Numerous studies were presented and discussed. An example included whether the capacity of the human mind was limited, such as short-term memory, which is limited to about 7 items. This led to proposals related overcoming these limitations, by recording information into chunks.

For example, a telephone number has 7 different digits, which could be the limit of memory, but recalled as one "chunk" of memory, it becomes much easier to recall. Sounds easy, though it is much more complicated, which a cognitive scientist would better understand and explain.

The studies done also led to coding and decoding, and with the existence of early computers, the founding of the artificial science field was developed. In addition, language as a learned habit was rejected and it was proposed that language comprehension can be explained in terms of mental grammars consisting of rules.

Those responsible for the founding of cognitive science and the previous mentioned examples include George Miller, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, Herbert Simon, and Noam Chomsky.

Cognitive scientists may include cognitive psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists, philosophers, anthropologists, and others. The differences between the scientists is distinguished by their methodology. Some may do scientific experiments in a laboratory, others may do field studies, and then there are some who will observe behaviors, examine thinking, or use a combination of methods.

Regardless of the cognitive scientist's expertise, their work and study has provided evidence for the mind-brain identity (the mind and brain are not the same) theory, which explains how mental processes are neural, representational, and computational. The brain operates in several modalities (visual and motor) enabling minds to deal with the world.

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