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 Marco Ferro, Jan Börner, Silke Hüttel, Katja Kowalski, Patrick Hostert, Krisztina Kis-Katos
Year 2026
Publisher American Journal of Agricultural Economics
Kind of work article
Discipline Economics
Secondary disciplines Ecology
Read it at the publisher 10.1002/ajae.70096
Preserving ecosystem services, along with economic and environmental benefits, will require future landscape policies to identify and incorporate relevant landscape features. In this paper, we investigate the causal effect of agricultural landscape simplification on drought‐related grassland damages. We use a novel remote‐sensing product to measure spatial variations in unproductive grassland due to compound drought and heatwave events, and relate it to a landscape metric measuring agricultural land use heterogeneity. Our causal identification strategy employs a spatially explicit fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design, leveraging Germany's former inner border as an exogenous predictor of agricultural landscape simplification intensity. We find that decreasing agricultural land use heterogeneity increases the share of grasslands rendered unproductive by the drought. Our results suggest that landscape simplification can undermine drought resistance by affecting water availability, decreasing grassland dry matter yields. Overall, this study emphasizes how landscape‐scale heterogeneity can increase ecosystem functionality and farm resilience.
Establish whether simplified (more homogeneous) agricultural landscapes causally worsen grassland damage during drought and heatwave events.
Remote-sensing grassland productivity data across Germany during the 2018 compound drought and heatwave.
Spatially explicit fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design using Germany's former East-West inner border as an exogenous source of variation in landscape simplification.
Using the former German inner border as a natural experiment, the study finds that decreasing agricultural landscape heterogeneity causally increases the share of grassland rendered unproductive during drought and heatwave conditions.
The finding demonstrates a causal relationship in which reduced landscape-scale heterogeneity, itself a system-composition property of the agricultural landscape, directly worsens an ecological outcome under drought stress.
Patterns it shows S, R
Added 2026-09-16
How to cite this Marco Ferro, Jan Börner, Silke Hüttel, Katja Kowalski, Patrick Hostert, Krisztina Kis-Katos (2026). The causal effect of agricultural landscape simplification on Germany's grasslands during a compound drought and heatwave in 2018. American Journal of Agricultural Economics.