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 Miller et al.
Year 2026
Publisher Nature Geoscience
Discipline Oceanography
Secondary disciplines Climatology
Read it at the publisher 10.1038/s41561-026-02057-3
Convection in the subpolar North Atlantic feeds highly oxygenated water into the lower limb of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), sustaining deep-sea organisms across a vast expanse of the ocean. Yet, the rates and processes responsible for this oxygenation have remained largely hidden by a lack of direct measurements. Here we apply newly developed calibration protocols for multi-year oxygen measurements to quantify oxygen transport across a mooring array spanning the Labrador Sea. The results show that Labrador Sea deep convection results in a substantial export of oxygen to the lower limb of the AMOC. Specifically, local air–sea exchange adds ~4.1 Tmol yr−1 of oxygen to dense Labrador Sea waters, while deep convection moves ~23.5 Tmol yr−1, added to lighter waters upstream in the eastern subpolar North Atlantic, to those same dense waters. We estimate that this export is sufficient to balance biological respiration across much of the deep North Atlantic, making processes in the Labrador Sea critical to North Atlantic oxygenation despite their small contribution to the densification of the AMOC lower limb. This finding shows that future risk of deep North Atlantic deoxygenation depends not only on the processes that drive overturning, but also on Labrador Sea deep convection. The Labrador Sea plays a crucial role in transporting oxygen into the deep limb of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, despite its limited contribution to density transformation, according to an analysis of 2 years of mooring data.
Mooring data from 2020-2022 show the Labrador Sea exports ~27.6 Tmol/yr of oxygen, of which only ~4.1 Tmol/yr comes from local air-sea exchange while ~23.5 Tmol/yr is upstream oxygen redistributed by deep convection into denser water masses, enough to balance deep-ocean respiration across much of the North Atlantic.
Deep convection is the causal mechanism (R) that redistributes oxygen, and the whole ventilation budget only balances once two distinct component parts — local air-sea exchange and convectively-redistributed oxygen — are summed (S).
Patterns it shows S, R
Added 2026-08-21
How to cite this Miller et al. (2026). Central role of Labrador Sea convection for transport of oxygen into the deep North Atlantic Ocean. Nature Geoscience.