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 Thomasson, Anna and Wigren-Kristoferson, Caroline
Year 2026
Publisher Systems Research and Behavioral Science
Kind of work article
Discipline Business & Management
Secondary disciplines Systems Science, Environment & Sustainability
Kind of engagement scholarly
Applied false
Read it at the publisher 10.1002/sres.3193
By combining theories of system thinking with a post-humanist approach, we established a nexus between human and non-human systems in the examination of systemic innovation. By doing so, we shed light on the interdependencies that exist between human and non-human systems and contribute theoretically as well as methodologically to theories on systems thinking by developing a framework for analysing systemic innovations focusing on the transition towards a more sustainable society. The identification of these interdependencies is particularly relevant to the discussions about systemic innovation and its role in the transformation towards a more sustainable society.
To deepen understanding of systemic innovation by joining systems thinking to a post-humanist approach, so that non-human systems such as water and infrastructure are analyzed alongside human ones, and to develop a framework for analyzing systemic innovations aimed at a more sustainable society.
A single embedded case: the 'Three pipes out' wastewater system in the Ocean Harbour neighbourhood of the H+ urban renewal project in Helsingborg, Sweden, developed by a municipal water company with a joint research company. Embedded fieldwork ran from October 2018 to October 2020 and produced fieldnotes from meetings and workshops, observations, and narrative interviews, with four key informants identified. The authors do not report interview or observation counts.
Single embedded ethnographic case study, written in a post-humanist narrative and confessional style from a stated social-constructionist position. Systems thinking supplies the warrant for questioning the boundaries, relationships and perspectives at work in the case; the post-humanist approach supplies the non-human actors.
The authors conclude that boundaries between natural, technical and social systems were not redefined but became more permeable, and that the innovation emerged in the relationships between human and non-human actors. Value shifted from a linear to a circular value chain, and implementation required changes in policy, business models and resident behaviour. They note that a single case limits generalisability and call for further research covering behavioural, social and aesthetic dimensions.
A Swedish wastewater innovation study that takes the four patterns from Cabrera, Cabrera and Powers as the warrant for questioning the boundaries, relationships and perspectives in its case, then joins them to a post-humanist account of non-human actors.
Thomasson and Wigren-Kristoferson introduce systems thinking as what lets a researcher question existing boundaries and relationships and challenge prevailing perspectives, citing Cabrera, Cabrera and Powers (2015). They quote that paper's characterization of systems theory as a fragmented field 'characterised by a baffling array of methods and approaches,' and then name the four rules directly: distinction, systems, relationships and perspectives, 'i.e., DSRP,' attributing them to Cabrera (2006) as reported in the 2015 article. The four rules do analytic work unevenly across the paper. Relationships and perspectives carry the findings: the innovation is located in the relationships between human and non-human actors, and the authors report that the project required a change in the perspective of the central stakeholders. Distinction appears once, in the observation that distinctions can be made between 'things' and 'ideas.' Systems is largely absorbed into the post-humanist vocabulary of boundaries and nested systems. The four patterns are not turned into a coding scheme or an instrument, and the only Cabrera source cited is the 2015 article.
The paper states the four patterns accurately and attributes them correctly, including the co-implied pairs implicit in its treatment of boundaries and of action and reaction. Its reading of distinction is narrower than the theory's: in DSRP a distinction is the identity-other operation that draws a boundary, not a taxonomy separating things from ideas, and the paper's one use of D takes the second sense. The framing is also narrower in a second way. Thomasson and Wigren-Kristoferson present the four rules as a researcher's stance, something that permits the analyst to question boundaries; DSRP's claim is about how any organized body of information is structured, whoever is looking at it. Nothing in the paper depends on the narrower reading, and the two patterns it leans on, relationships and perspectives, are used as the theory describes them.
Patterns it shows D, S, R, P
Shows it makes a difference
Added 2026-10-19
How to cite this Thomasson, Anna and Wigren-Kristoferson, Caroline (2026). Innovation in the Spaces In-Between: Creating the Nexus Between Human and Non-Human Actors in Systemic Innovations. Systems Research and Behavioral Science.