(July 2025, Undergraduate Research Sympossium) Epistemic Theoretical Foundation: Physics-Grounded Field Justification, Conservation-Based Integration, Exemplified in an Interdisciplinary Field Proposal

Justification of new hypotheses, interdisciplinary fields, and emerging domains is often slow and reliant on expert authority or extensive empirical validation. This work proposes a physics-based, logic-driven methodology for justifying interdisciplinary scientific fields grounded in conservation laws and system closure. Rather than appealing to consensus or precedent, the framework employs a closed-system integration argument rooted in foundational physical assumptions to identify principled points of connection between subfields. As a case study, the brain is modeled as an energetically bounded, recursively structured system, enabling the construction of a trauma-informed cognitive science framework. Within this model, trauma is conceptualized as a conserved, self-reinforcing dynamical attractor that alters memory, identity, and symbolic behavior through recursive field evolution. Core psychoanalytic and cognitive constructs are reinterpreted as self-consistent informational flows constrained by physical conservation principles. This approach demonstrates that theoretical coherence alone can establish the viability of an interdisciplinary field without requiring prior empirical validation or expert consensus. The resulting framework—Cognitive-Based Emulation—serves both as a justified cognitive field proposal and as a generalizable template for founding new interdisciplinary scientific domains across the sciences and humanities. Empirical modeling and validation are identified as natural future extensions of this principled theoretical foundation.