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 Ferry et al.
Year 2015
Publisher Child Development
Discipline Human Development
Read it at the publisher 10.1111/cdev.12381
This research asks whether analogical processing ability is present in human infants, using the simplest and most basic relation—the same–different relation. Experiment 1 (N = 26) tested whether 7- and 9-month-olds spontaneously detect and generalize these relations from a single example, as previous research has suggested. The attempted replication failed. Experiment 2 asked whether infants could abstract the relation via analogical processing (Experiment 2, N = 64). Indeed, with four exemplars, 7- and 9-month-olds could abstract the same–different relation and generalize it to novel pairs. Furthermore, prior experience with the objects disrupted learning. Facilitation from multiple exemplars and disruption by individual object salience are signatures of analogical learning. These results indicate that analogical ability is present by 7 months.
To research the ability to process analogies in infants aged 7 to 9 months old.
their results suggest that infants are able to abstract the same/different Relations. They found that the infants looked significantly longer at the novel pair than the others for both the same and different conditions, which is in contrast to their initial replication. This meant that the infants “successfully generalized the abstract relation to new objects presented for the first time in test trials.”
While Relationships can be abstracted universally as a purely structural cognitive act, they are also content specific (that is the relationship itself is distinguishable by additional informational content such as “sameness” or “difference” or perhaps countless other content variables).
The analogy is a common tool in which “new words and inflections are created on the basis of regularities in the form of existing ones.” Ferry et. al. 2015 researched the ability to process analogies in infants aged 7 to 9 months old. Analogical ability is defined in the text as, “the ability to make relational comparisons between objects, events, or ideas, and to think about relations independently of a particular set of arguments.” They outlined three possibilities for how analogical ability develops. First, it is innate—infants are born with skill in a series of basic relations (including the same/different Relations). The second possibility is that infants are born with analogical ability that allows them to be able to process and abstract relationships from their experiences. And lastly, the third possibility is that, “analogical ability is not an inherent capacity but is formed by combining more basic processes, guided by cultural and linguistic experience.” Ferry et. al. did two experiments to test this, but the first was an unsuccessful replication of Tyrrell et. al. 1991.
For the second experiment, the major question was, “Can infants derive abstract same–different Relations from a brief series of examples, and if so does this learning process bear the signatures of analogical learning?” In this experiment, 64 healthy, full-term infants participated, roughly half were ~7 months old and the others were ~9 months old. Half of the infants were assigned the “same” condition, and half of the infants were assigned the “different” condition. While in the waiting room, the infants were exposed to some of the toys, as pictured in Figure 15 (top is same condition, bottom is different condition):
13 Definition from 14 In the waiting room infants saw a subset of the individual toys before the experiment. Infants were habituated to four pairs of objects, either same or different. In six sequential test trials looking time was recorded to the novel and familiar relational pairs in three different types of test trials (object experience, object experience + pair habituation, and novel).
For the familiarization trials, the infants were exposed to a series of objects that were either the same or different. The 4 groups of stimuli are pictured in Figure 22:
Patterns it shows R
How to cite this Ferry et al. (2015). Prelinguistic Relational Concepts: Investigating Analogical Processing in Infants. Child Development.