A Brief History of Thought About Thought
Throughout history, humans have tried to understand thinking
How humans have tried to understand thinking, from myth and philosophy to neuroscience and artificial intelligence
Humans have always thought about thinking. From the moment we gained self-awareness, we began to ask: What is this inner voice? What is a mind? These questions lie at the heart of philosophy, science, religion, and even art. Our understanding of thought has evolved radically over millennia, yet in many ways, we are still grappling with the same mysteries.
The Mythic Mind: Thought as Spirit or Soul
Before formal philosophy and science, early cultures explained thought through spiritual and supernatural frameworks. In many ancient traditions, thinking was not a purely personal or mechanical process, but a function of the soul or spirit. Dreams, visions, and inspiration were believed to be messages from gods or ancestors. The mind was not confined to the head—it could travel, possess, or be influenced by forces beyond the individual.
In the Homeric epics, for example, characters rarely think in the way we understand it today. Instead, gods implant thoughts in their minds. In this view, thinking was not under one's control—it was something done to you.
Related reading: The relationship between schizophrenia and religious visions
Greek Philosophy: Mind as Rational Soul
The ancient Greeks shifted the conversation from myth to reason. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle saw the mind as the seat of reason and morality. Plato described the soul as having three parts—reason, spirit, and desire— with reason ideally guiding the rest. He also emphasized the importance of introspection and dialogue as tools for examining one’s thoughts.
Aristotle, meanwhile, made early distinctions between perception, memory, and abstract reasoning. He saw thought as a natural faculty—something humans possessed more fully than animals.
This was the beginning of a long-standing tradition of treating reason as the defining human trait.
Religion and Dualism: Mind vs. Body
In medieval thought, especially in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, the mind was often seen as synonymous with the soul—immaterial, eternal, and distinct from the body. This dualistic view reached its philosophical height with René Descartes in the 17th century, who famously declared, “I think, therefore I am.” For Descartes, the ability to doubt or think proved the existence of the self, independent of the physical world.
This “mind-body dualism” deeply influenced Western thought. The mind was a non-material essence, separate from the brain and body—a view that still echoes in popular culture today.
The Scientific Revolution: Mind as Mechanism
As science advanced, thinkers began to challenge dualism. In the 17th and 18th centuries, philosophers such Hobbes and Locke proposed that thought arose from the body and the senses. The mind, they argued, was shaped by experience—a blank slate filled by perception.
By the 19th century, the brain had become the center of attention. Advances in anatomy and physiology led to the idea that mental activity was rooted in physical structures. Psychology began to emerge as a scientific field, exploring attention, memory, and learning through experimentation.
Behaviorism and the Rejection of the Inner Mind
In the early 20th century, behaviorism rejected introspection entirely. Figures such as John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner insisted that psychology should focus only on observable behavior. The “mind” was considered a black box—unknowable and irrelevant to scientific study.
Thinking, under this model, was simply behavior that hadn’t been acted out yet. While this view was influential, it also stripped away much of what makes thought feel meaningful—subjectivity, self-awareness, and inner experience.
The Cognitive Revolution: The Mind as an Information Processor
By the mid-20th century, cognitive science reinvigorated the study of internal mental processes. Influenced by developments in computer science, researchers began to model the mind as an information-processing system. Thoughts were no longer just behaviors or soul functions—they were computations. Memory became "storage," reasoning became "processing," and the mind became a kind of software running on the brain’s hardware.
This metaphor proved powerful and fruitful. It led to breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, linguistics, and neuroscience. Yet it also raised philosophical questions: Is the mind really like a computer? Can machines think like humans?
Related reading: Examining the ‘I’ in ‘AI’
Neuroscience and the Brain-Based Mind
Modern neuroscience has taken us into the physical depths of thought. Using technologies like fMRI and EEG, scientists can now observe the brain in action—mapping regions involved in language, emotion, and decision-making. Mental disorders, once seen as purely spiritual or moral failings, are increasingly understood as neurological imbalances.
This brain-based model of mind offers powerful insights, but it still struggles with "the hard problem": How does brain activity produce conscious experience? Knowing which neuron fires doesn’t tell us why it feels like anything to be you.
Related reading: Consciousness is primarily a top down process
Today’s Questions: Beyond Brains and Bodies
Today, many researchers and philosophers argue that thought cannot be understood solely by looking inside the skull. The extended mind hypothesis suggests that tools, shared language, environments, and other people play an active role in cognition. When you use a calculator or write a note, is the thinking happening in your mind— or across a system?
Others explore whether consciousness might be a fundamental part of the universe (a view called panpsychism) or whether current models of AI will one day replicate true human thought.
The Mystery Remains
From spirits to synapses, our understanding of thought has transformed again and again. Each era builds new metaphors to explain the mind—chariots, steam engines, computers, neural networks. Yet none has captured it entirely. Thinking remains at once the most intimate and elusive part of human experience. We may never fully grasp what it means to think.