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 Tyler McCann
Year 2023
Publisher Medium
Kind of work casestudy, blog
Discipline Business & Management
Kind of engagement scholarly
Applied false
To diagnose why members of Cornell University's Graduate and Professional Student Assembly engaged with it as a funding mechanism rather than as an advocacy body, and to propose a redesign of the organization using the VMCL framework.
Cornell University's Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, a shared governance body for graduate and professional students, analyzed on the basis of the author's participation and research conducted in 2017, together with a small pilot implementation.
A practitioner case analysis applying the four VMCL components to an existing organization. The author restated the organization's vision and mission, identified missing capacities, and specified learning mechanisms, then implemented parts of the redesign on a small scale. Proposed capacities included an internal wiki and an external website for resource management; proposed learning mechanisms included member satisfaction surveys and tracking of advocacy issues.
The author concludes that the organization's central dysfunction was a missing linkage between its stated advocacy mission and the capacities and incentives members actually faced, observing that most members were participating out of strategic compliance to ensure their funding eligibility rather than with an eye on the larger student community. The redesign restated the vision as "Every student, every conversation" and the mission as to inform, advocate and support, and recommended using non-voting members as communication bridges to constituencies. The author reports that full implementation did not occur because of competing priorities, and that a small pilot showed promise, with increased member participation, faster decision turnaround, improved external relationships, and positive comment from university administration.
A practitioner case analysis that applies Cabrera and Cabrera's VMCL framework to a university shared-governance body, using it to locate a broken link between the organization's mission and its capacities and to specify a redesign.
Added 2026-10-01
How to cite this Tyler McCann (2023). Rethinking the GPSA. Medium.