Fascia: Organ, System, or Tissue? A Phenomenological Embryological Approach a Critical Philosophical Paper on Fascia as a Domain not Fitting into the Usual Anatomical Mapping

The term fascia encompasses more than just connective tissue: it creates cohesion, space, and freedom of movement. This, however, contrasts with classical anatomical and histological classifications that reduce the fascia to a set of separate connective tissue structures and describe it in the narrowest possible sense. A phenomenological analysis of embryonic development now suggests that fascia is better understood as the inner-tissue that forms a continuous multi-dimensional matrix and thereby lays the foundation for physical cohesion of the body. The fascia is then no longer just another discrete anatomical system but is characterized by its continuities and the prerequisite for the formation of all the body’s ‘parts’. This study posits that the so-called mesodermal germ layer is NOT one of three equivalent elements, but rather the mesenchymal inner-tissue dimension of the body: an organizing substrate within which the organs and tissues differentiate. The hypothesis that fascia forms the neurophysiological basis of ‘interoception’ is then questioned with the latter also appearing as a non-anatomical dimension analogous to the fascia. Understanding fascia from this broader perspective thus requires a consideration of embryonic development as a whole-body process: one in which the ‘inner-self’ differentiates into the recognizable organs and tissues of anatomy.