Scientific Foundations

The Foundations of TCF

How philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience converge to reveal the internal axis that organizes human experience.

The axis before the method

Philosophy

Before science existed, before theory existed, there was a more basic human need: to orient oneself within reality. Human beings do not begin by wanting to measure. They begin by wanting to understand where they are.

Philosophy is born exactly at this point. It does not arise to explain how things work, but to ask something prior: "From where do I look at the world?"

Plato

Perceived reality depends on the internal place from which one observes. Before discussing facts, it is necessary to ask from where those facts are being seen.

Aristotle

Before action, there is an internal structure that guides movement. Everything carries an internal direction.

Epictetus

Freedom is not controlling everything, but correctly occupying one's own place.

Marcus Aurelius

True freedom is not the absence of conflict, but internal stability in the midst of conflict.

When the world enters from within

Psychology

Psychology is born when human beings realize that they do not react to the world directly. They react to the way the world is organized internally.

The same event, experienced by different people, produces completely different experiences. Here, the focus shifts away from the environment and turns toward internal experience.

Freud

Not everything that governs us is conscious. The world enters from within and continues to act even when it is not perceived.

Jung

The world does not enter only through personal experience. It also enters through collective patterns of meaning.

Skinner

Much of what we call "choice" is a response to learned patterns.

Rogers

Despite internal and external influences, there exists an experiential core—a tendency toward coherence and development.

When the brain enters the equation

Neuroscience

Neuroscience is born when human beings begin to observe the biological substrate of experience: the brain and the nervous system.

Here, the axis is not meaning itself, but the terrain where meaning is processed.

Ramón y Cajal

Learning is not merely adding information—it is reorganizing connections. Experience leaves physical marks.

Donald Hebb

The more a path is traveled, the easier it becomes to follow it again. Changing is building new tracks.

António Damásio

Emotion does not hinder reason. It guides it through somatic markers.

Eric Kandel

Memory is inscribed in chemical and structural changes. What we live literally shapes the brain we have.

What organizes everything

The Integration

Throughout all these fields, a question naturally imposes itself: what keeps all of this organized within the human being?

The human axis is not a specific idea. It is not an opinion. It is not an isolated emotion. It is the internal structure that organizes all of these things.

The Axis

Two people may receive the same information. One expands. The other enters into conflict. What changes is not the external stimulus—it is the internal axis that organizes experience.

Structural Beliefs

The human axis is formed from deep beliefs—not always conscious. Not religious or ideological beliefs, but structural ones:

Is the world safe or hostile?

Are people trustworthy or threatening?

Does error destroy or teach?

Does life have meaning or is it mere survival?

Go Deeper

Explore the complete theory in "The Code of Life" — the foundational work on the Theory of Fundamental Belief.