This paper reviews the history of cognitive studies on thinking from the dynamical point of view. In the early 1970s, researchers employed the formal approach to thinking where its processes were modeled as applications of domain-independent formal rules. However, in the 1980s, various studies revealed that human thinking is best characterized as a knowledge dependent process. Although knowledge plays critical roles, this approach had difficulties in dealing with flexible use of knowledge, its origin, and interaction with the external environment. In the 1990s, dynamics of thinking is more and more a topic within the scope of cognitive science, by virtue of biological approaches such as cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and extended connectionism, as well as the research on analogy, creative thinking and scientific reasoning. Finally, methodological issues to further develop the dynamical approach are discussed.
