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.
Authors Kenta Koyanagi, Andrea Andreoli, Giovanna Nordio, Hugo Gaudron, Ronald Pöppl, Francesco Comiti
Year 2026
Publisher Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies
Kind of work article
Discipline Hydrology
Secondary disciplines Geography, Environment & Sustainability
Applied false
Read it at the publisher 10.1016/j.ejrh.2026.103569
Study Region We developed a new experimental nested catchment in the Eggen-Ega River basin, Eastern Italian Alps, comprising four 27 m2 hillslope plots and three watersheds draining 2.34, 42.4, and 166 km2. Study Focus We aimed to understand scale-dependent magnitude and controls of turbid stormflow transfer across the Alpine catchments. We monitored runoff volume and turbidity at four spatial scales and assessed their dependence on the characteristics of 23–41 rainfall events between April and October 2024. New Hydrological Insights for the Region Storm runoff coefficients exhibited a negative power-law scaling with drainage area (exponent: −1/10), suggesting stronger scale-dependent runoff fluctuations at finer scales, critically limiting the representativeness of small-scale, single-point stream gauging in the region. On the contrary, the mean runoff coefficients at 42.4 and 166 km2 were both 0.01, suggesting sufficient region-specific drainage sizes to average out the uniqueness of monitoring locations and timing. While rainfall intensity and saturation (event depth and duration) exerted primary controls on event-scale sediment delivery from 27 m2 plots to a 2.34 km2 headwater, turbidity in the larger 42.4 km2 catchment was more variable and less sensitive to rainfall predictors, likely due to sediment routing beyond the timescale of individual storm events. Our novel nested catchment approach highlights scale-dependent observations of turbid stormflow, calling for extended monitoring of nested catchments across the Alpine regions.
To understand the scale-dependent magnitude and controls of turbid stormflow transfer across Alpine catchments.
One experimental nested catchment in the Eggen-Ega River basin, Eastern Italian Alps: four 27 m2 hillslope plots and three watersheds of 2.34, 42.4, and 166 km2, monitored over 23–41 rainfall events (April–October 2024).
Hierarchical nested-catchment monitoring of runoff volume and turbidity at four spatial scales, relating each to rainfall event characteristics.
Storm runoff coefficients scaled negatively with drainage area (power-law exponent −1/10), and rainfall intensity and saturation controlled sediment delivery at plot and headwater scales but not turbidity at the 42.4 km2 catchment scale.
The study shows that a catchment is a nested system whose parts and wholes respond differently to the same rainfall input, so that what is observed about the rainfall-runoff relationship depends on the scale from which it is observed.
Patterns it shows S, R, P
Added 2026-10-03
How to cite this Kenta Koyanagi, Andrea Andreoli, Giovanna Nordio, Hugo Gaudron, Ronald Pöppl, Francesco Comiti (2026). Scale-dependent hydrological controls on storm runoff volume and its turbidity in nested catchments of the Eastern Italian Alps. Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies.