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 Schwandt, Jamie
Year 2020
Publisher Medium (self-published)
Kind of work course
Discipline Education
Secondary disciplines Kinesiology, Military
Kind of engagement public
Applied false
To publish a self-modifying course syllabus, which Schwandt calls a complex adaptive syllabus, for two Fort Hays State University courses, and to describe the 'Swarm Learning' design he built from the Cabreras' VMCL model and structured on the four DSRP patterns.
Two virtual Spring 2020 courses at Fort Hays State University: HHP 630 Administration in Health Care, a three-credit graduate course, and HHP 340 Tests and Measurements, a two-credit undergraduate course. Enrollment is given only as a small class setting. Schwandt reports 19 student-published blogs as of 31 December 2019 from earlier cohorts.
The syllabus is organized as four four-week modules named for the four patterns: Module 1 Distinctions (weeks 1–4), Module 2 Systems (weeks 5–8), Module 3 Relationships (weeks 9–12), Module 4 Perspectives (weeks 13–17). Students build Knowledge Trails, which are Plectica concept maps posted to a WordPress site with replies to at least two peers; Feedback Trails, which pair feedback maps with a ten-question survey after each assessment that Schwandt uses to alter the course mid-term; Essay Maps; and a collaborative 'Swarming the Canvas' map built with current students, former students and outside experts. Supporting tools include Blackboard, Rationaleonline, Thortspace, Mindly, Medium and a Facebook group. Assigned reading includes Systems Thinking Made Simple and Thinking at Every Desk, alongside Lawrence's Hecastics, Bionomics and Diathetics, OODA, Constructal Law, Cynefin, DMAIC and the red-team 'String of Pearls.' Extra credit goes to the first poster on each assignment, and a publi
Schwandt claims that continuous feedback lets students change a course while it is running, altering how concepts are learned rather than which, that the design facilitates knowledge transfer and teaches thinking over memorisation, and that it produced higher engagement, enjoyment and retention. He reports no outcome data, control group or comparison; the support offered is his own account and the count of student-published blogs.
A published university syllabus built on the Cabreras' work twice over: VMCL supplies the architecture of the 'Swarm Learning' design, and the four DSRP patterns supply the four course modules, with Plectica and Thinkquiry as the mapping tools students work in.
Schwandt states that 'The concepts in this course will be analyzed and synthesized using DSRP' and gives each pattern with its pair: Distinctions as identity and other, Systems as part and whole, Relationships as action and reaction, Perspectives as point and view. The two courses are then divided into four four-week modules named for the patterns in that order. Separately he writes that 'I used the Cabrera's VMCL model to construct Swarm Learning (SL)' and 'I used VMCL to guide and develop SL,' citing Flock Not Clock for the move 'from a clock and machine mindset to that of a flock mindset.' He gives each VMCL term — vision as desired future state, mission as the rules or repeatable actions that bring it about, capacity as the systems providing readiness to execute the mission, and learning as continuous improvement of those systems on feedback from the external environment — and maps them onto the course: students customise the class while it runs through feedback, the mission is to teach students how to think, capacity is built with OKRs, and learning is adaptation on feedback, which he compresses as 'Information + Thinking = Knowledge.' Plectica is named as the program the class will typically use, and Thinkquiry as a tool within it, which he describes as thinking differently about how questions are asked from a systems thinking approach: 'What's different about Thinkquiry is the underlying logic of DSRP which is multivalent,' and DSRP logic 'expands on this bivalent logic,' so the familiar questions can still be asked while deeper ones become available.
The syllabus states the four patterns with their co-implied pairs correctly and keeps VMCL and DSRP in their proper relation, using the organizational model to structure the course and the four patterns to structure the content, rather than collapsing one into the other. The account of VMCL's terms matches the Cabreras', including the point that capacity is the systems that make the mission executable rather than a stock of resources. The one strained reading is the treatment of modules: running Distinctions, then Systems, then Relationships, then Perspectives across four successive four-week blocks presents the patterns as a sequence, where the theory holds they are simultaneous and mutually implicating, so that organizing a system already requires distinguishing its parts. The syllabus itself supplies the corrective, since the mapping work in Plectica requires all four at once from the first assignment. On its own claims the document offers no evidence beyond the author's report and a count of student blogs, which is the appropriate weight to give a syllabus rather than a study.
Patterns it shows D, S, R, P
Added 2026-10-19
How to cite this Schwandt, Jamie (2020). Swarm Learning: Complex Adaptive Syllabus (CAS) — Spring 2020. Medium (self-published).