The article analyzes three main topics: ideas about thinking, formed in ancient philosophy and in modern times, studies of thinking in the Moscow Methodological Circle, mainly in the works by G.P. Shchedrovitsky, as well as the author’s views on thinking (a kind of conceptualization). The views on thinking in logic, methodology and phenomenology are considered, the problems of development and the agent of thinking, the logical and methodological determinants of thought are discussed. The author presents the results of the cultural and historical reconstruction of the formation of thinking, showing that three components of thinking were formed in ancient philosophy – discursive activity, including the constitution of ideal objects, norms of thinking (thinking patterns, logical rules and categories), concepts of thinking. He calls this tripartite structure "the genome of thinking." The genome of thinking was established anew in the Middle Ages and in the modern culture, as the requirements for all three of its components has changed. The author characterizes the ideas about thinking outlined in the three programs of the Moscow Methodological Circle (semiotic interpretation of thinking, reducing it to activity, representation as “pure thinking” in the scheme of “thinking activity”). At the same time, he believes that Shchedrovitsky did not succeed in understanding the essence and mechanisms of the development of thinking. In turn, the author, relying on his own research on thinking, argues that the first start of thinking happened with the formation of the thinking genome, and the second start was the inclusion of the thinking genome in the institutions of modernity (science, art, law, religion, esotericism), which significantly affect thinking. The latter, in turn, changes and transforms under the influence of culture, personality, problems and challenges of the time.