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 Zingeser, Jacob Alexander
Year 2026
Publisher Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin, Faculty of Life Sciences, Albrecht Daniel Thaer-Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences (master's thesis)
Kind of work thesis
Discipline Agriculture & Food
Secondary disciplines Environment & Sustainability, Systems Science
Kind of engagement scholarly
Applied false
Read it at the publisher 10.18452/36845
The author sets out to ask what mental models can do for inter- and transdisciplinary research in agri-food systems, and whether co-created cognitive maps can surface and foster systems thinking among researchers and practitioners working across disciplines.
Ten mental models co-created in one-on-one video interviews with researchers and practitioners from three European inter- and transdisciplinary projects, AgroecologyTRANSECT, CHORIZO, and ENFASYS, preceded by two reflective interviews that informed the design.
A qualitative, interpretivist study. Maps were drawn collaboratively in Mural during interviews and verified by participants, then analyzed by deductive and inductive thematic coding, with the deductive codes targeting distinctions, systems, relationships, and perspectives. The results chapter is organized to follow the logic of the DSRP approach, and a figure illustrating what a system is, using the DSRP framework and adapted from Midgley (2024), is used to interpret the maps.
The author reports that mental models display varying degrees of systems thinking; that participants converge on the problems facing agri-food systems but diverge on how to progress toward sustainability; that more precise distinctions correlated with more relationships and greater complexity; and that nine of the ten models captured non-linear relationships. He concludes that mental models can foster systems thinking and help bridge disciplinary viewpoints, particularly with skilled facilitation and when introduced early in project planning.
A Humboldt-Universitat master's thesis that uses DSRP as its deductive coding scheme and as the organizing structure of its results, analyzing ten co-created mental models from three European agri-food research projects.
Zingeser introduces DSRP in his framework chapter as four cognitive skills that function as rules by which systems thinking takes place, attributing the theory to Cabrera and Cabrera (2019), and he devotes a subsection to each pattern. Distinctions are grounded in the 2008 formulation that naming something creates a boundary between it and everything it is not. Relationships carry a caution he takes from Cabrera and Cabrera that correlation should not be mistaken for causality, which he calls a common error among systems thinkers. In the results he draws on the claim that ideas can be parts and wholes at once to interpret how participants nested concepts in their maps. The framework then becomes method. The deductive half of the coding scheme targets distinctions, systems, relationships, and perspectives, and the results chapter is explicitly structured to follow the logic of the DSRP approach, with the author noting at one point that his findings exemplify the interplay between the skills rather than their separate operation. A figure illustrating what a system is in DSRP terms serves as the reference against which the ten maps are read. The reported correlation between more precise distinctions and more relationships and complexity in a map is the thesis's most direct empirical claim about the patterns, and the finding that nine of ten maps captured non-linear relationships is offered as evidence that practitioners represent complexity even when untrained in doing so. One feature of the transmission is worth recording: the DSRP diagram reaches the thesis adapted from Midgley (2024) rather than from the Cabreras directly.
The thesis uses the four patterns the way a coding scheme should be used, as categories that observations fall into rather than as labels applied after the fact, and the choice to structure the results by pattern makes the analysis checkable against the maps. Zingeser also states the theory correctly on the point most often garbled in applied work: he presents the patterns as interacting rather than sequential, and his observation that his findings exemplify the interplay between the skills is what the theory predicts. His finding that maps with more precise distinctions also carried more relationships and more complexity is a small piece of independent evidence for the claim that the patterns co-occur rather than operating in isolation, though with ten maps it is descriptive rather than inferential. The secondhand figure is worth flagging for anyone tracing how DSRP travels: the diagram is adapted from Midgley (2024), so the visual representation of the theory arrives through an intermediary even though the textual account is cited to the primary sources.
Patterns it shows D, S, R, P
Shows it makes a difference
Added 2026-10-22
How to cite this Zingeser, Jacob Alexander (2026). Mapping Complexity: What Can Mental Models do for Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research in Agri-Food Systems?. Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin, Faculty of Life Sciences, Albrecht Daniel Thaer-Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences (master's thesis).