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 Renata Jagustović, Robert B. Zougmoré, Aad Kessler, Coen J. Ritsema, Saskia Keesstra, Martin Reynolds
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
Applied true
Read it at the publisher 10.1016/j.agsy.2018.12.008
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) conceptually has the potential to contribute to the 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 goals of CSA 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 of sustainable food production through investigating the contribution of systems thinking as a conceptual approach and complex adaptive system (CAS) attributes as a framework for analysis of CSA. This was done through examining (i) to what extent CSA represents a CAS and (ii) what contribution systems thinking and CAS attributes can make to understanding and scaling-up sustainable food production systems through CSA. The CSA situation was conceptualized through systems thinking sessions with women farmers in the climate-smart village (CSV) of Doggoh-Jirapa, northern Ghana, and was guided by the Distinctions, Systems, Relationships and Perspectives (DSRP) framework. Systems thinking, and CAS attributes provide system-wide understanding of elements, dynamics and trade-offs over temporal and spatial scale in selected agri-food systems. As such it could aid horizontal and vertical scaling-up by informing policy developoment and selection of a context-specific portfolio of technologies and practices at landscape and farm levels to achieve synergies between goals. In this study, systems thinking enabled women farmers in the CSV to identify income-generating and tree planting activities, with desirable simultaneous system-wide 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 and complexity of CSA as a constituent of the food production 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.
15 women farmers selected by lottery in the Doggoh-Jirapa climate-smart village, northern Ghana; four facilitated sessions.
Participatory systems-thinking sessions structured by DSRP, each led by one pattern, producing a causal loop diagram rendered in Vensim and analyzed against five complex-adaptive-system attributes.
Fifteen women farmers, selected by lottery, built a causal loop diagram of their climate-smart agriculture system across four facilitated sessions. The map exposed a maladaptive loop: climate-smart practices raise women's workload and their need for cash, the cash is raised by selling wood and making charcoal, and that reduces tree cover, increases erosion, and lowers the maize yield the practices were meant to raise. The women identified two interventions — intensifying tree planting, and diversifying their own income-generating activities. The paper reports identification only; no planting is reported.
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 four participatory sessions in which women farmers analyzed a climate-smart agriculture system, each session designed around one of the patterns. Co-author Martin Reynolds published "Response to paper 'Systems Thinking' by D. Cabrera et al." in 2008, arguing from a critical systems perspective; this paper cites that response for its agreement that systems thinking is fundamentally cognitive.
Patterns it shows S, R
Added 2026-08-12
How to cite this Renata Jagustović, Robert B. Zougmoré, Aad Kessler, Coen J. Ritsema, Saskia Keesstra, Martin Reynolds (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.