What is Cognitive Science?

Cognitive Science is the study of the mind, i.e., of how knowledge is acquired and used. Cognitive scientists use theories and methods drawn from many disciplines including cognitive psychology, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, linguistics, computer science, artificial intelligence, physics, mathematics, biology, and anthropology.

They ask questions such as: How do people acquire language? What are the neural bases of perceiving, learning, and remembering?   What is the nature of knowledge? Can machines think? How do experts differ from novices? Are there innate ideas? How did human intelligence evolve?

When it began a few decades ago, Cognitive Science had a strong computational focus, and hence computer science and artificial intelligence have been central to the field from its beginnings. During the 1990's, the Decade of the Brain brought remarkable advances in our understanding of the relation between mind and brain, and so the field of neuroscience is increasingly central to cognitive science.