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 Huang et al.
Year 2020
Publisher Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
Discipline Neuroscience
Read it at the publisher 10.1073/pnas.1922832117
Significance Figure–ground segregation, segmenting images by the visual system into figures and background, is the first processing step on the way to visual perception and relies on three complementary processes: boundary detection, region filling, and background suppression. By combining psychophysics, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and effective connectivity analysis, we showed that awareness was important for both region filling and background suppression, but less so for boundary detection. More importantly, we revealed that the awareness-dependent region-filling and background-suppression processes in V1 were derived by feedback from FEF and DLPFC, respectively. Our study indicates an awareness-dependent figure–ground segregation and identifies the human prefrontal cortex as a source of this fundamental process.
To locate the neural source supporting awareness-dependent segregation of figure from ground.
fMRI + TMS identified a human prefrontal region whose activity is required for conscious figure–ground segregation; disrupting it impaired separation of figure from background.
The brain actively separates a bounded figure (identity) from its ground (other).
The brain actively separates a bounded figure (identity) from its ground (other) — the foundational act of drawing a boundary — and this depends on a specific prefrontal source. Purpose: To locate the neural source supporting awareness-dependent segregation of figure from ground. Finding: fMRI + TMS identified a human prefrontal region whose activity is required for conscious figure–ground segregation; disrupting it impaired separation of figure from background. [Added 2026-07-30 as new evidence beyond the original 109; DSRP structural basis: D axiom (Structural Unity): figure/ground is the canonical identity/other boundary; extends existing Peterson & Skow-Grant figure-ground entry with a causal neural source.]
Patterns it shows D
Added 2026-07-30
How to cite this Huang et al. (2020). A source for awareness-dependent figure–ground segregation in human prefrontal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).