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 Moon-Sup Lee, Seung-Yeon Han
Year 2026
Publisher Systems
Kind of work article
Discipline Systems Science
Secondary disciplines Information Science, Computer Science & AI
Read it at the publisher 10.3390/systems14091126
Human-in-the-loop pipelines are widely used in artificial intelligence (AI)-based inspection systems, coupling an automated model, human reviewers, and an organizational reporting layer that drives decisions and, potentially, model retraining. The closed loop this creates is a design feature, not a defect; the pathology lies one level up, where a record produced by editing the model's own output is treated as an independent reference and the automated-versus-reviewed difference is reported as "accuracy"—a closed loop read as open. This paper offers no alternative estimator; it shows that none is available here and that the infeasibility is itself the diagnosis. We examine the loop in a national pavement-management program, matching automated and reviewed outputs for 349 images across 162,520 individual grids. Reviewers accepted 89.06% of grids without change, added 10.25%, removed 0.28%, and reclassified 0.42% (an addition-to-removal ratio of 36.4:1); patching accounted for 64.5% of the added grids (39.8–69.0% across leave-one-route-out folds), added grids largely recording maintenance patches, not cracks. Consistent with the documented review workflow, 24 images were identical even by grid type and 98.06% of automated distress grids survived review (97.6–99.6% across folds); the reviewed record therefore cannot serve as an independent reference, and detection accuracy cannot be estimated. Across 40 route segments, the dependence mechanism and the asymmetry's direction are invariant; the composition and magnitude are not. We reinterpret the reported figure and derive systems-level interventions—reporting items, interface priorities, and independent-reference requirements.
To determine whether the "accuracy" figures reported for a human-in-the-loop AI pavement-inspection system actually measure model performance against an independent reference, or are an artifact of a closed feedback loop.
A national (Korean) pavement-management program's automated vs. human-reviewed inspection outputs for 349 road images comprising 162,520 individual grid cells, across 40 route segments.
Observational socio-technical audit matching automated model outputs to human-reviewed (edited) outputs grid-by-grid, quantifying acceptance/addition/removal/reclassification rates and testing robustness via leave-one-route-out cross-validation folds.
98.06% of the automated model's flagged distress grids survived human review unchanged (97.6-99.6% across folds), with an addition-to-removal edit ratio of 36.4:1, showing the "reviewed" record is not independent of the model's own output and that reported accuracy figures for this system are therefore not a valid measurement of detection performance.
The study shows that a measurement's validity depends on whose perspective is treated as the independent reference point, and that when the reviewer's perspective is causally entangled with the system it is meant to judge within a closed-loop structure, the resulting measurement is invalidated.
Patterns it shows S, R, P
Added 2026-09-16
How to cite this Moon-Sup Lee, Seung-Yeon Han (2026). When Human Review Is Treated as Ground Truth: A Socio-Technical Analysis of Reference Dependence and Measurement Validity in Human-in-the-Loop AI Inspection Systems. Systems.