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 Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann
Year 2025
Publisher regenerativeeconomics.earth / Doughnut Economics Action Lab
Kind of work book, course
Discipline Economics
Secondary disciplines Environment & Sustainability
Reading level beginner
Kind of engagement applications
An open-access, student-centred textbook for reimagining economics education. Enough material for a 2-year course! We have developed a free, online, open-access textbook that brings the principles of Regenerative Economics into secondary classrooms. The resource supports both students and teachers who want to rethink what the economy is, what it's for, and how it can serve people and planet.
Brings regenerative economics into secondary classrooms as a free, open-access, student-centered textbook with enough material for a two-year course, for students and teachers who want to rethink what the economy is and what it is for.
An online textbook covering households, markets, commons, and the state, with sections on money and finance and on international exchange still to come. A dedicated strand on systems thinking and models runs alongside the economics content, teaching feedback loops and the dynamics of change. Licensed Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0, published July 2025 and still being updated.
The section presents DSRP as the student's basic toolkit for reading economic systems, paired with diagrams and classroom activities.
A free secondary-school economics textbook teaches all four DSRP patterns as its systems thinking unit, defining identity-and-other, part-whole nesting, labeled relationships, and point-view, then working them through economic examples such as provisioning institutions and the wider economy.
This is a full two-year secondary economics curriculum. The systems thinking strand that runs alongside the economics content is built on DSRP, and chapter S.2 teaches the four patterns from first principles with examples pitched at teenagers: a football team for distinctions, a cord carrying electricity for a physical relationship, teacher feedback and student motivation for a conceptual one. The chapter sends students on to the lab's own materials, including the Master the Moves video shorts and the Thinkquery tool. The textbook is listed in the Doughnut Economics Action Lab tool library, which is how most teachers will find it, and it carries a Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license, so schools can adapt it freely.
Curriculum adoption evidence. DSRP arrives here as the systems thinking method inside somebody else's subject, chosen by an economics educator building a course for teenagers. The open license and the Doughnut Economics listing both widen the reach, since any school adapting the book carries the DSRP chapter along with it.
Patterns it shows D, S, R, P
Added 2026-09-15
How to cite this Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann (2025). Regenerative Economics (open-access textbook), Section S.2: Systems thinking patterns. regenerativeeconomics.earth / Doughnut Economics Action Lab.