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.
Try a different term or clear the filters.
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.
What if Epistemology and Ontology are the Same Thing? What if Models are Reality Organizing Reality?
Authors Cabrera, Derek; Cabrera, Laura
Year 2026
Publisher Journal of Systems Thinking
Kind of work article
Discipline Philosophy
Secondary disciplines Systems Science, Cognitive Science
Reading level technical
Read it at the publisher 10.54120/jost.v26i1.dc6eost6
What if epistemology and ontology are not two different things? What if models are reality organizing reality? Philosophy repeatedly draws the same basic line: mind/body, mind/nature, model/reality, epistemology/ontology. These distinctions are useful for talking, but they become misleading when treated as evidence that reality is divided into fundamentally different kinds. O-Theory starts from a simpler claim: thinking is the organization of information into meaning or mental models, M = I.O, where the organizational operator is O = DSRP-484. If the same organizational primitives also characterize reality, then R = I.O. The critical point is that the O on both sides is the same. Mind is therefore not a special substance standing outside reality and attempting to represent it. Mind is one organized part of reality interacting with and modeling other organized parts of reality. More strongly, if reality is recursively composed of information-organizing systems, R = M1, M2, ..., Mn, with each Mi = Ii.O, then what we call "mind" is one local manifestation of a process occurring throughout reality. In that sense, M = R modeling R. This reframes the classical mind/body, mind/nature, model/reality, and epistemology/ontology problems as variations of the same mistaken dualism: a useful distinction within one reality mistaken for a division between different kinds of reality. O-Theory therefore does not propose a bridge between mind and world. It proposes that the apparent divide is explanatory, while the deeper unity lies in the shared organizational structure.
Argues that the mind-body, mind-nature, model-reality and epistemology-ontology splits are four versions of one mistake, and that O-Theory dissolves them rather than bridging them. The target is not dualism as a doctrine but the move that grants a useful distinction too much ontological weight.
A formal argument rather than a study. Thinking is defined minimally as organizing information, T is identical to organizing information, with the process separated from its product: T(I; O) yields M, so a model is not information alone but organized information, M = I.O. The explanatory burden is placed on the organizational operator, O = DSRP-484. The same form is then asserted of reality, R = I.O, and the two are joined by the claim that the O on both sides is the same operator. Reality is treated as recursively composed of such systems, R = the set of M1 through Mn, each Mi = Ii.O, which yields M = R modeling R. The paper draws its empirical support from cited work rather than new data, and is careful about what each source can carry.
If the same organizational operator characterizes both mind and material reality, the apparent divide between them is explanatory scaffolding rather than a difference in kind. The authors state the consequence directly: "Epistemology is what ontology looks like when one part of reality is organizing information about another part," and "Mind is what reality looks like when one part of it is modeling another." They set a minimum bar for what counts as a modeler, so that the claim does not collapse into panpsychism: a modeler must differentially register information about its environment, embody those differences in its own state, and have those state differences constrain its subsequent interaction. Mere physical change is not enough, and consciousness is not required. They also mark the position off from panpsychism, neutral monism, and process philosophy, and state the falsification condition: if some form of organization in cognition or reality requires structural primitives outside DSRP-484, or if DSRP-484 fails to account for an observed organizational structure, the universality claim fails. The Love-Reality Loop is reinterpreted along the way, as describing the recursive dynamics of one world rather than a bridge between two.
Derek and Laura Cabrera argue that the split between knowing and being is not a real division but an artifact of treating a useful distinction as a boundary, and that the same organizational operator runs on both sides of it.
The paper's move is to take a claim O-Theory already makes about thinking and apply it symmetrically. If a mental model is information organized by DSRP-484, and if reality is organized by the same primitives, then the operator is shared and the difference between mind and world is a difference in scale, recursion and capacity rather than in kind. The authors anticipate the obvious objection, which is that O-Theory's own Love-Reality Loop diagram puts mind on one side and reality on the other and so looks like the dualism it criticizes. Their answer is that the picture is explanatory scaffolding, written for readers whose language already splits knower from known, and that the unity is in the operator rather than the diagram. They are also careful about their evidence. The qubit work they cite was not testing O-Theory, and they say so explicitly, keeping direct tests and independent convergent findings as separate classes of support rather than blending them.
This is the ontological statement the containment runs were quietly resting on. Those papers ask whether a formalism's organization falls inside the DSRP-484 closure; this one says why that question is worth asking, since if the operator is the same on both sides then a modeling language failing to reach a structure is a fact about the language rather than about reality. Two things make the record more useful than a position paper. The paper names its falsifier in the same terms the runs use, one necessary organizational structure that DSRP-484 cannot generate, so the philosophical claim and the empirical program share a failure condition. And the minimum bar for a modeler does real work, because without it the claim that reality is made of modelers reads as panpsychism, which the authors explicitly reject. The caveat is that the argument's weight rests on cited convergence rather than on anything established here, so the record should be read alongside the studies it points to rather than as evidence in its own right.
Patterns it shows D, S, R, P
Formal proof or model
How to cite this Cabrera, Derek; Cabrera, Laura (2026). The Original Sin of Dualism: What if Epistemology and Ontology are the Same Thing? What if Models are Reality Organizing Reality?. Journal of Systems Thinking.