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 Valdés Garciatorres, Jorge
Year 2026
Publisher Proyectum
Kind of work article
Discipline Business & Management
Secondary disciplines Systems Science
Kind of engagement public
Applied false
To argue that leaders asking more questions can make their decisions worse when the questions are informational rather than structural, and to offer DSRP as the practical means of asking structural questions before gathering data. The article's framing line is "En lugar de preguntar únicamente por información (¿cuál es el problema?), debemos hacer preguntas que revelen estructura."
One consulting engagement, reported by the consultancy that conducted it. A client firm believed its analysts were underqualified and sought technical training for them; no number of analysts, interviews or sites is given.
A practitioner essay in Spanish. It opens on an Ackoff epigraph, narrates the client engagement and what structural questioning revealed, draws the distinction between informational and structural questions, introduces DSRP with citations to the published research, and supplies four structural questions for each of the four patterns. Supporting material comes from Ackoff's notion of a "mess," Box on all models being wrong, and Gall on complex systems evolving from simple working ones.
The author reports that the client's diagnosis was wrong: the analysts were technically competent, and the dissatisfaction came from the surrounding system — sales promising unrealistic results to close contracts, projects staffed by leader availability rather than expertise, and metrics rewarding on-time delivery irrespective of value. He concludes that "los problemas complejos se empiezan a resolver entendiéndolos," presents DSRP as the framework that makes structural questioning practical, credits Derek and Laura Cabrera of Cornell with it, and cites their work for the claims that most people use about 20% of the available mental structures and that explicit DSRP training produces a 580% increase in cognitive complexity. He closes by recommending humility about one's first mental model, structural questions before data collection, and openness to having one's understanding restructured by reality, and describes systems thinking as a skill built through deliberate practice.
A Mexican project-management consultancy uses DSRP to argue that leaders ask the wrong kind of question. Valdés Garciatorres contrasts informational with structural questions and supplies four structural questions for each of the four patterns, built around a client engagement in which poor analyst performance turned out to be a property of the system around the analysts.
The article's case example is a consulting assignment. A firm came to Proyectum convinced that its analysts needed technical training, because clients were dissatisfied with their work. Instead of surveying the analysts' skills, the consultancy asked how the surrounding system worked, and the answers pointed elsewhere: sales was promising results the delivery side could not meet, staffing followed leader availability rather than expertise, and the metrics rewarded delivering on time whether or not the work was worth anything. The analysts could not have satisfied the clients from inside that arrangement. From this the author draws his central contrast. Informational questions gather facts, which are necessary but arrive already filtered through the asker's biases; structural questions examine how the information is organized, and it is these that let a leader see the situation as it is. DSRP is then introduced as the framework that makes the second kind of question askable, credited to Derek and Laura Cabrera at Cornell and supported with citations to Cabrera and Colosi (2008), Cabrera and Cabrera (2015, 2022), Cabrera, Cabrera and Powers (2015) and Cabrera, Cabrera and Midgley (2021). The author also carries over the Love Reality Loop, glossed as valuing reality over being right and letting facts correct one's assumptions. The operational core is four question sets, one per pattern: for Distinctions, what exactly is being defined as the problem, what is left out, and where the boundaries are drawn; for Systems, what parts make up the problem, what larger system it belongs to, and which levels of analysis are being ignored; for Relationships, which actions produce which reactions, what feedback cycles exist, and which elements influence each other; for Perspectives, from whose point of view the situation is being seen, what alternative vantages exist, and how the understanding would change from another one. The closing recommendations are to begin in humility, to use DSRP before collecting data rather than after, and to stay open to being wrong, with a question to readers about the last time they paused to ask about a problem's structure before proposing a solution.
Patterns it shows D, S, R, P
Shows it makes a difference
Added 2026-10-13
How to cite this Valdés Garciatorres, Jorge (2026). Por qué hacerle más preguntas a tu equipo puede estar empeorando tus decisiones. Proyectum.