Abstract: The earliest sources on students’ cognitive activity and its nature date back to ancient times. It has been known since ancient times that cognitive activity helps students to get deeper into the essence of things, processes and events, to strengthen memory. In the works of medieval thinkers who lived and worked in the Near and Middle East, serious attention was paid to the fact that the types, principles, structure, criteria of scientific knowledge are related to human mental development and perfection.

Keywords: cognitive activity, scientific knowledge, scientific method, observation, experiments.