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 L. T. Fink, K. Frieler, R. Muralikrishnan, M. Wald-Fuhrmann
Year 2026
Publisher Music & Science
Kind of work article
Discipline Music Theory
Secondary disciplines Psychology
Applied false
Read it at the publisher 10.1177/20592043261437593
This study aims to create a dialogue between music psychology and music-theoretical discourse on the perception of musical form. In a lab and online study, we investigated how listeners segment Western classical music in real time, focusing on (1) inter-rater agreement, (2) alignment with music-theoretical analyses of sonata form, (3) subjective qualities of segment boundaries (beginnings, endings, importance ratings), and (4) the effects of repeated listening.
To examine whether listeners' spontaneous, real-time segmentation of classical music aligns with formal music-theoretical analysis of sonata form.
Lab study: 43 participants without formal musical training; online study: 88 participants; all completed musical sophistication questionnaires.
Participants marked perceived segment boundaries in real time via key press while listening twice to two Romantic orchestral movements (one with clear structural boundaries, one with ambiguous transitions), rating boundaries on expectedness, sense of ending, and importance; results were compared to formal analyses following Caplin's and Hepokoski/Darcy's sonata theory using Gaussification, dynamic time warping, and signal detection theory.
Listener-marked segment boundaries showed above-chance agreement with each other and strong correspondence with music-theoretical sonata-form boundaries at major, acoustically salient structural moments, but this alignment weakened for secondary themes and formally important yet acoustically unmarked transitions, with repeated listening reshaping agreement differently depending on how clearly a piece's form was articulated.
The study describes a system of nested musical parts (themes, sections, sonata-form units) whose boundaries listeners partially but not fully distinguish, comparing two perspectives on the same piece—naive listening and formal music-theoretical analysis—that only partly align.
Patterns it shows D, S, P
Added 2026-09-19
How to cite this L. T. Fink, K. Frieler, R. Muralikrishnan, M. Wald-Fuhrmann (2026). Listener Perception and Musical Structure: A Study of Segmentation in Sonata Form. Music & Science.