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 Srdjan Kesic
Year 2024
Publisher Systems, 12(1), 29
Kind of work article
Discipline Complexity Science
Kind of engagement scholarly
Applied false
Read it at the publisher 10.3390/systems12010029
This article argues that complexity scientists have been searching for a universal complexity in the form of a 'theory of everything' since some important theoretical breakthroughs such as Bertalanffy's general systems theory, Wiener's cybernetics, chaos theory, synergetics, self-organization, self-organized criticality and complex adaptive systems, which brought the study of complex systems into mainstream science. In this respect, much attention has been paid to the importance of a 'reductionist complexity science' or a 'reductionist theory of everything'. Alternatively, many scholars strongly argue for a holistic or emergentist 'theory of everything'. The unifying characteristic of both attempts to account for complexity is an insistence on one robust explanatory framework to describe almost all natural and socio-technical phenomena. Nevertheless, researchers need to understand the conceptual historical background of 'complexity science' in order to understand these longstanding efforts to develop a single all-inclusive theory. In this theoretical overview, I address this underappreciated problem and argue that both accounts of the 'theory of everything' seem problematic, as they do not seem to be able to capture the whole of reality. This realization could mean that the idea of a single omnipotent theory falls flat. However, the prospects for a 'holistic theory of everything' are much better than a 'reductionist theory of everything'. Nonetheless, various forms of contemporary systems thinking and conceptual tools could make the path to the 'theory of everything' much more accessible. These new advances in thinking about complexity, such as 'Bohr's complementarity', Morin's Complex thinking, and Cabrera's DSRP theory, might allow the theorists to abandon the EITHER/OR logical operators and start thinking about BOTH/AND operators to seek reconciliation between reductionism and holism, which might lead them to a new 'theory of everything'.
The paper concludes that no single reductionist or holistic 'theory of everything' can capture the whole of reality, but that holistic approaches have better prospects, and names DSRP among the advances that could make that path more tractable.
Kesic situates DSRP within the history of attempts to build a universal complexity science, placing it alongside Bohr's complementarity and Morin's complex thinking as a conceptual tool that could help complexity theorists move past either/or reasoning toward both/and reasoning.
Patterns it shows D, S, R, P
Added 2026-09-20
How to cite this Srdjan Kesic (2024). Universal Complexity Science and Theory of Everything: Challenges and Prospects. Systems, 12(1), 29.