This book discusses the main contributions to cognitive research in what we call its prehistory, the period prior to about 1900. Rather than attempting a complete history, we focus on the main figures and the most significant contributions of philosophers and psychologists in the period. The main figures discussed are Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Darwin, Wundt, Frege, James, and Freud. Other figures who enter some of the chapters include Francis Bacon, Antoine Arnauld, Gottfried Leibniz, the evolutionary theorists who surrounded Darwin, the biologists and other contributors from the various disciplines that influenced Freud, and so on. The contribution to contemporary cognitive science of many of the figures we discuss has not been explored before. Interestingly, significant contributions of many of the figures we discuss have not been taken up by contemporary research. The book has been written to be accessible to the widest possible range of readers. Contributors include Noam Chomsky, world-famous linguistic theorist, the well-known Kant and Freud scholars Patricia Kitcher and Andrew Brook, one of the most creative Hobbes scholars Marcelo Dascal, original Hume scholar Anne Jaap Jacobson, a scholar well-known for applying Darwinian theory in contemporary economics Don Ross, the famous Wundt scholar Arthur Blumenthal, a major student of James Tracy Henley, the important Frege scholar Peter Simons, and an accomplished experimental psychologist making his first foray into the history of cognitive research, Stellan Ohlsson. All chapters except the one by Chomsky are published here for the first time.