This is Essay 1 of the Collection of 'Essays on Cognitive Physical Science' in the repository UPSpace of the University of Pretoria.The main text of this essay starts with traditional sub-Saharan African thinking, and concludes with the author’s “Parallel-Systems Mind Model”. The Parallel-Systems Mind Model is one of the outcomes of the author’s research that is aimed at re-evaluating certain aspects of physical science from a cognitive-sciences-contextualised physical-science perspective, as well as at drawing conclusions for physical science teaching to a multi-cultural populace as in South Africa.The Parallel-Systems Mind Model elaborated here is the author's first attempt of developing a vision of the human mind in which findings of the cognitive sciences are interpreted from a physicist's perspective. A perspective which is more accessible for physicists than is a typical cognitive-sciences approach to the enigma of mind.