Abstract Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of mind and intelligence, embracing psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, and computer modeling (artificial intelligence). After a review of the history of the field and its contributing disciplines, this chapter examines some of the main theoretical and experimental advances that cognitive science has accomplished over the past half-century, deriving lessons that might be useful for researchers in any emerging interdisciplinary area. The intellectual benefits of interdisciplinary research dramatically outweigh the personal and social difficulties of operating in more than one field. For theoretical, experimental, and practical progress, the separate disciplines that study the mind need to be interdependent, relying on each other for ideas and methods that complement their own.