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 Pauline Larrouy-Maestri, T. Ata Aydin, Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann
Year 2026
Publisher Scientific Reports
Kind of work article
Discipline Music Theory
Secondary disciplines Psychology
Applied false
Read it at the publisher 10.1038/s41598-026-54414-2
Making sense of our auditory environments involves forming meaningful perceptual categories. While 'music' is culturally diverse, Western listeners seem to consistently distinguish it from other sounds. In preregistered experiments, we examined the identification of sounds as music by presenting a large range of stimuli—musical excerpts from different geographical origins and a variety of other auditory materials—to a total of 735 online Western participants. Our findings demonstrate that sound evaluation is rather consistent, with a modest effect of listeners' perspective, stimulus duration, and repetition on music categorization. Listeners tend to agree in their ratings and three distinct categories emerged: music, not-music, and ambiguous sounds. Within the music cluster, listeners' evaluations of culturally diverse stimuli did not differ from the evaluations of genres more familiar to Western listeners. Although the three sound categories overlap in a low-level acoustic space, they were clearly separated by perceptual judgments—particularly the recognition of musical instruments, detection of melodies, and inference of intentionality. Such findings support the idea that 'music' is a distinct and stable perceptual construct encompassing a wide range of stimuli.
To test whether 'music' functions as a distinct, stable perceptual category, separable from other sounds, across culturally diverse auditory stimuli.
735 online Western participants, presented with musical excerpts from varied geographic origins and other auditory materials.
Preregistered online categorization experiments in which participants rated a wide range of auditory stimuli as music, not-music, or ambiguous, examining effects of listener perspective, stimulus duration, and repetition.
Listeners consistently sorted stimuli into three separable perceptual categories, music, not-music, and ambiguous sounds, that were clearly separated by perceptual judgments even though the categories overlapped in low-level acoustic space.
'Music' is a genuine, boundary-defined perceptual distinction rather than a graded or arbitrary label, holding independently of listeners' cultural familiarity with the stimuli.
Patterns it shows D
Added 2026-09-26
How to cite this Pauline Larrouy-Maestri, T. Ata Aydin, Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann (2026). Music is a distinct perceptual category with subjective grounds. Scientific Reports.