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 Gibson, Hise O.
Year 2021
Publisher Medium (self-published; originally published at blog.cabreraresearch.org)
Kind of work article
Discipline Business & Management
Kind of engagement public
Applied false
Gibson argues that the office closures of 2020 were a natural experiment whose lessons organizations should consolidate rather than discard, and that systems thinking is the means of consolidating them.
A short argumentative essay in sections — past, the natural experiment, the implications, the categories, the bridge. The historical case is General Motors, with corporate offices in Detroit and manufacturing in Indiana, used to show that office and factory work never had to share a location. The contemporary case is the rapid move to near-fully-remote work at firms including Facebook. A figure shows a relationship-distinction converted into a relationship-distinction system.
Gibson sorts organizational responses into three. Fully remote, which he doubts most organizations can sustain, because people need in-person interaction and the psychological side of virtual work is under-studied. 'Back to the Future', which returns immediately to pre-2020 operations, treats the pandemic as a black swan, and in his view ignores the workforce these organizations want to attract. Innovative hybrid, which combines past and new experience and which he favors. He notes a split workforce, with newer employees wanting flexibility and senior employees wanting predictability. He argues that organizations should take a tactical pause to compare how they operate now with December 2019, create a 'Tradespace' in which strategic decisions can be made while tactical execution continues, and use the DSRP model to reach what he calls the innovative middle, citing Cabrera for the claim that innovation occurs in the interfaces, interactions and connections and that relationship-distinction systems are an algorithm for innovation.
Gibson's use of DSRP is narrow and deliberate. He takes one construct, the conversion of a relationship into a system with an identity of its own, and applies it to the space between office work and remote work. Hybrid work on his account is not a compromise between two locations but a relationship that has become a thing in its own right, with parts and an inside, and can therefore be designed and inspected. That is the RDS move used as the theory defines it, and the conclusion he draws from it — that a firm should be able to say what its RDS looks like — follows. The post does not teach the four patterns and does not try to; it points readers to the four simple rules for that and spends its length on the application. Perspectives go unused, and that is the gap in it, because the argument turns on two points of view on one system: newer employees who want flexibility and senior employees who want predictability. The piece names that split and then reasons about the system without taking either vantage.
Patterns it shows D, S, R
Shows it makes a difference
Added 2026-10-09
How to cite this Gibson, Hise O. (2021). The New Normal: DSRP Systems Thinking. Medium (self-published; originally published at blog.cabreraresearch.org).