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 Beavers and Jerro
Year 2026
Publisher Natural Language & Linguistic Theory
Discipline Linguistics
Read it at the publisher 10.1007/s11049-026-09720-9
Argument alternations are an empirical mainstay in studying the building blocks of verb meaning and how such meanings link to a verb’s grammatical properties. Event structures are widely adopted for exploring these questions, where a verb’s meaning is decomposed into an event template (defining grammatically coherent verb classes) and a root (filling in idiosyncratic verb-by-verb details). An alternation is analyzed as one root occurring in two templates, the latter supposedly predicting most of the properties of the alternation. Yet, idiosyncratic roots also have a significant effect in determining which alternations they occur in and the two variants’ interpretations. Beavers and Koontz-Garboden (2020) proposed that roots can also introduce the same templatic information as templates, in ways that explain such root-specific effects through compositional interactions of root and template meanings. We explore the explanatory power and limits of this ‘root semantic’ approach by expanding its empirical scope to an alternation similar to a dative alternation in Kinyarwanda (Bantu JD61; Rwanda), which are derived via the applicative morpheme -ir . The broad productivity of -ir in forming ditransitives, coupled with the significantly wider range of root-specific interpretative and grammatical effects, provides an ideal case study for the role of idiosyncratic verbal meaning in governing argument alternations. We show that a root semantic approach naturally captures the diversity of root-specific effects in Kinyarwanda, justifying it as part of a general theory of alternations. However, ingredients from work that has syntactified constraints on alternations or posited allosemic variation in templatic meaning are also needed, resulting in a multifactorate understanding of alternations with root semantics at its core.
Using Kinyarwanda applicative constructions, the study shows a verb's specific semantic root -- not just its grammatical event template -- systematically determines which and how many argument alternations the verb permits, yielding a wider range of alternations than standard template-driven accounts predict.
A verb's argument-alternation behavior is a whole composed of two interacting parts (event template and semantic root) whose combination is not reducible to either part, and the root causally shapes which alternations occur.
Patterns it shows S, R
Added 2026-08-12
How to cite this Beavers and Jerro (2026). The role of root semantics in determining argument alternations. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory.