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 Jagustović et al.
Year 2019
Publisher Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, 171, 65-75
Kind of work article
Discipline Agriculture & Food
Secondary disciplines Environment & Sustainability
Reading level technical
Kind of engagement scholarly
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) conceptually has the potential to contribute to sustainable development goals of achieving zero hunger, reducing land degradation, eliminating poverty, tackling climate change, and promoting gender equality. The scaling-up needed to achieve CSA goals represents a challenge, as it entails understanding synergies between often opposing socioeconomic and environmental priorities and trade-offs over temporal and spatial scales. In this paper, we tested new approaches to support scaling-up food production through investigating the contribution of systems thinking and complex adaptive system (CAS) attributes framework for analysis of CSA. This was done by examining (i) to what extent CSA and (ii) what CAS can make understanding of situation was conceptualized through systems sessions with women farmers in climate-smart village (CSV) Doggoh-Jirapa, northern Ghana, guided by Distinctions, Systems, Relationships and Perspectives (DSRP) framework. Systems thinking and CAS provide system-wide understanding of system elements, dynamics and trade-offs over temporal and spatial scales in selected agri-food systems. As such it could aid horizontal and vertical scaling-up by informing policy development of selection of context-specific portfolio of technologies and practices at landscape and farm levels to achieve goals. This study enabled women farmers in CSV to identify income-generating tree planting activities, with desirable system-wide simultaneous impact. The paper calls for further testing of tools, approaches, and methods that enable dynamic systems thinking to inform scaling-up efforts, while embracing the transdisciplinary nature of complexity and constituent elements of the food system.
An Agricultural Systems study testing systems thinking and complex-adaptive-system attributes, guided by DSRP, in sessions with women farmers in the climate-smart village of Doggoh-Jirapa, northern Ghana.
Systems thinking and CAS give system-wide understanding of elements, dynamics, and trade-offs that could inform scaling-up policy — and the sessions led the women farmers to income-generating tree planting with desirable system-wide impact.
Applies DSRP as the core systems-thinking method to structure participatory sessions with women farmers analysing a climate-smart agriculture system in northern Ghana.
DSRP structured the participatory sessions in which women farmers analyzed a climate-smart agriculture system, and the sessions informed planting decisions the participants went on to make. An applied use of the four patterns in agricultural systems research, by authors with no connection to the theory's development.
Patterns it shows S, R
Added 2026-08-12
How to cite this Jagustović et al. (2019). Contribution of systems thinking and complex adaptive system attributes to sustainable food production: Example from a climate-smart village. Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, 171, 65-75.