The Universal & Atomic Elements of Organization
A falsifiable scientific theory proposing that the same irreducible structures organize both thought and reality — from the quantum to the social scale.
O-Theory proposes that four irreducible structures — Distinctions, Systems, Relationships and Perspectives (DSRP) — form the universal grammar of organization. Rather than being merely useful ways of thinking, these structures are hypothesized to be the atomic elements from which every organized phenomenon emerges, whether in cognition, biology, physics, mathematics, society, or the cosmos.
| D | S | R | P |
| Distinctions | Systems | Relationships | Perspectives |
| Identity ↔ Other | Part ↔ Whole | Action ↔ Reaction | Point ↔ View |
| D := (i ↔ o) | S := (p ↔ w) | R := (a ↔ r) | P := (ṗ ↔ v) |
This is a living scientific evidence compendium: an open, continually evolving collection of independent empirical research, formal theory, mathematical proofs, cross-disciplinary analyses, applications, critiques, and proposed falsifications. Every entry is included because it supports, refines, challenges, or attempts to falsify the theory.
Scientific theories are strengthened not only by evidence that confirms their predictions, but also by surviving attempts to falsify them. This compendium brings both together: independent evidence from researchers who were not testing DSRP and proposed counterexamples evaluated against the formal theory.
One counterexample is enough to falsify O-Theory. Until then, the question remains: do the same four structures organize everything from quantum systems to human thought?
Independent convergence is one of the strongest forms of scientific evidence because researchers arrive at the same conclusion while investigating different questions for different reasons.
The number is not the point. Researchers in different fields, studying different questions with different methods, repeatedly arrived at the same structural predictions—almost always without testing DSRP or using its language.
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This compendium began as the peer-reviewed literature review “A Literature Review of the Universal and Atomic Elements of Complex Cognition,” published in the Journal of Systems Thinking with 109 studies. That paper is the peer-reviewed foundation. What you see here is its living, continuously updated version . New studies are checked before they are added, and the collection now holds and keeps growing. Open any card to see what the researchers found, why it bears on DSRP, and where the original review discusses it, the fuller account.
The collection is updated continuously, so the citation carries the date you consulted it rather than a study count — the count changes weekly, and putting it in the reference would make the same collection look like a different work to everyone who cites it. To cite a single claim or study, use its own address: every one has a permanent link.
This is the adversarial half of the compendium. Where the evidence track asks what converges on DSRP, this one asks what would end it: a single organized phenomenon whose structure needs a fifth pattern, a ninth element, or a fifth structural dynamic. It holds written up from candidates across territories, and resolutions — the general answers those cases settle against. Every case is published whether it held or failed, including the ones still open.
Cite this rather than the evidence collection when the point is what survived attack. The two are separate works with separate addresses: one asks what converges on the theory, the other asks what would end it, and a reference to the first does not support a claim about the second. Case and resolution numbers change when the record is revised, so cite a case by its own permanent link rather than by number.
This collection is meant to keep growing. Send us a study, paper, book or critique that bears on DSRP, whether it supports the theory or cuts against it, and we will read it and decide whether it belongs.
Authors Mascalzoni et al.
Year 2013
Publisher Developmental Science
Discipline Human Development
Read it at the publisher 10.1111/desc.12018
Perception of mechanical (i.e. physical) causality, in terms of a cause–effect relationship between two motion events, appears to be a powerful mechanism in our daily experience. In spite of a growing interest in the earliest causal representations, the role of experience in the origin of this sensitivity is still a matter of dispute. Here, we asked the question about the innate origin of causal perception, never tested before at birth. Three experiments were carried out to investigate sensitivity at birth to some visual spatiotemporal cues present in a launching event. Newborn babies, only a few hours old, showed that they significantly preferred a physical causality event (i.e. Michotte's Launching effect) when matched to a delay event (i.e. a delayed launching; Experiment 1) or to a non‐causal event completely identical to the causal one except for the order of the displacements of the two objects involved which was swapped temporally (Experiment 3). This preference for the launching event, moreover, also depended on the continuity of the trajectory between the objects involved in the event (Experiment 2). These results support the hypothesis that the human system possesses an early available, possibly innate basic mechanism to compute causality, such a mechanism being sensitive to the additive effect of certain well‐defined spatiotemporal cues present in the causal event independently of any prior visual experience.
How humans come to perceive causal relationships.
The newborns showed a significant preference for the causal event over the non-causal ones. This experiment resulted in the conclusion that “the spatial continuity of trajectory between the motion of the two objects appears to be crucial in determining newborns’ preference.” The results showed that the newborns were able to Distinguish between the event and its inverted form, and they still showed a preference for the causal events.
This study demonstrates a newborn’s visual perception of causal relationships, and it’s similarity to that same mechanism found in adults.
Additional research conducted by Mascalzoni et. al. 2013 explored “the question of how humans come to perceive causal relationships [that] has long been a challenge both for philosophers and psychologists.” They studied the presence and use of causal reasoning in newborn children in three experiments. The first experiment tested whether newborn babies were able to Distinguish and have a preference for a causal vs. a non-causal event. The causal stimuli presented was a two object event with apparent causal motion with spatial and temporal continuity, while the non-causal stimuli was characterized by temporal discontinuity. They said that, “the delay event, in fact, was identical to the launching one except for the presence of a 1-s delay between the time of contact and the motion of the second object.” The ages of the newborns ranged from 8 to 71 hours old. A preferential looking task was used to gather data, and while measuring, distractions were minimized to the best of their ability. The newborns showed a significant preference for the causal event over the non-causal ones. For the second experiment, the stimuli were the same, except for the spatial parameters. “Both stimuli in Experiment 2, in fact, were characterized by a discontinuity between the trajectory of the two objects involved in each event.” The procedure was identical to experiment one. This experiment resulted in the conclusion that “the spatial continuity of trajectory between the motion of the two objects appears to be crucial in determining newborns’ preference.” For the third experiment, the purpose of the experiment was to test the role of the “temporal sequence between the motion of the two objects in triggering newborns’ preference.” The causal event was the same as in experiment one. The non-causal Relationship differed in that object B moved first, then object A moved. The non-causal stimuli is inverted. The procedure was identical to experiment one. The results showed that the newborns were able to Distinguish between the event and its inverted form, and they still showed a preference for the causal events. They wrote that,
“overall, newborns seem to be sensitive to the additive effect of a set of perceptual cues (i.e. temporal continuity between the motion of the two objects involved in the event, continuity of trajectory between the motion of the two objects, and the sequence of the displacements of the two objects) which are crucial in determining perception of physical causality in adults.” This study demonstrates a newborn’s visual perception of causal relationships, and it’s similarity to that same mechanism found in adults.
Patterns it shows R
How to cite this Mascalzoni et al. (2013). The cradle of causal reasoning: newborns’ preference for physical causality. Developmental Science.