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 Jimenez et al.
Year 2026
Publisher Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
Discipline Geology
Secondary disciplines Hydrology, Environment & Sustainability
Read it at the publisher 10.5194/nhess-26-3815-2026
The 6 February 2023 Türkiye–Syria earthquake doublet triggered thousands of coseismic landslides. On 14–15 March, an Atmospheric River (AR) delivered up to 183 mm of rainfall across the seismically weakened region, triggering hundreds of additional landslides and debris flows, causing extensive downstream flooding and damage. Existing regional hazard assessment tools typically model seismic- and rainfall-triggered landslides separately, and rarely incorporate post-seismic hillslope weakening into rainfall-based predictions. Here, we develop a rapidly deployable regional hazard model that integrates seismic and rainfall drivers with post-seismic legacy effects to map landslide probability using the open-source Landlab framework and global gridded datasets. Incorporating legacy effects improves model performance under the AR forcing, yields more realistic probabilities, and lowers the critical slope for landslide initiation by up to 13° relative to the same model without the legacy effect. Analysing event sequencing, we find that this AR event preceding or coincident with the earthquake produces the greatest hazard extent, with median critical slopes in high-probability areas (P(F)≥0.6) up to 7° lower than when the AR follows the seismic event. Finally, we develop a pre-event forecasting method that uses historical extreme rainfall records to map post-seismic landslide hazard and show that it closely replicates the hazard map derived from the 14–15 March AR event. The proposed model supports disaster preparedness, early warning, and risk reduction before and after earthquakes in landslide-prone regions.
The team found that when a major rainfall event follows earthquake shaking, ground already weakened by the quake fails at slopes up to 7-13 degrees lower than normal, making combined seismic-hydrological hazard substantially higher and more widespread than either driver modeled alone.
Landslide hazard is not a sum of two independent risk factors but an emergent property of how the earthquake and rainfall subsystems relate in time — their sequencing shifts the critical slope-angle boundary separating safe from hazardous terrain.
Patterns it shows D, S, R
Added 2026-08-14
How to cite this Jimenez et al. (2026). Modeling the combined effects of the 2023 Türkiye–Syria earthquake and an Atmospheric River event on landslide hazard. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences.