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 Sudasna na Ayudhya, Anyarat
Year 2019
Publisher Chulalongkorn University
Kind of work thesis
Discipline Education
Secondary disciplines Business & Management
Reading level technical
Kind of engagement scholarly
Read it at the publisher 10.58837/chula.the.2019.615
Develops and validates NADDIA, an online case-based training design model for building systems thinking ability, with DSRP questioning designed in as one of the model's named instructional strategies. Tested with airline cabin-crew instructors and flight attendants.
Produces a six-stage validated model. Participants trained with it showed gains in systems thinking ability significant at the 0.05 level on a paired-samples t-test.
DSRP is in the intervention, not the bibliography – the Thai abstract names DSRP-rule questioning as a strategy component of the model itself. That makes this an instrumentation case: someone building a training model in a different country, language, and industry reached for the four rules as the questioning engine. The evidence is about the model as a whole, though, not about DSRP separately; nothing here isolates the contribution of the DSRP component from the other five stages.
Doctoral dissertation, Chulalongkorn University, Department of Educational Technology and Communications (Crossref records the department as Technology and Educational Resource Management). Thai title: the Crossref record gives the original Thai title and truncates the author's surname to the final element, so the romanization "Sudasna na Ayudhya, Anyarat" should be checked against the dissertation itself before this row is published. Participants per the Crossref abstract: 5 administrators, 39 instructors, 296 online learners, and 18 experts. The Thai abstract names DSRP-rule questioning explicitly as a core strategy component.
DSRP questioning is a named strategy component of the training model itself. An instructional designer in Thailand, working with airline cabin crew instructors, built the four rules into how the model asks questions, and participants improved on a systems thinking measure.
Patterns it shows D, S, R, P
Added 2026-09-10
How to cite this Sudasna na Ayudhya, Anyarat (2019). An Online Case-Based Training Design Model to Develop Systems Thinking Ability. Chulalongkorn University.