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 Du Plessis, Lihani
Year 2026
Publisher University of Cambridge (PhD thesis, Apollo repository)
Kind of work thesis
Discipline Engineering
Secondary disciplines Public Health, Public Policy, Business & Management
Kind of engagement scholarly
Applied true
Read it at the publisher 10.17863/cam.133388
To ask what prevents public health systems from procuring ethically, taking modern slavery in the supply chains of England's NHS as its case, and how a systems thinking approach can reveal and address the constraints involved.
Twenty-six semi-structured expert interviews with procurement and ethical buying professionals across six European countries, plus a focus group of systems thinking researchers.
An interdisciplinary, exploratory qualitative study drawing on supply chain research, modern slavery research, health policy and systems research, and systems thinking, with DSRP theory and an Agent-Based Approach as its analytical framework.
Du Plessis concludes that complexity, power, and responsibility are interrelated emergent properties of complex adaptive systems and among the largest barriers to ethical procurement; that the NHS, a health system of systems under stress with low procurement maturity, currently lacks the culture, capacity, and resources to address modern slavery in its supply chains; and hypothesizes that procurement maturity is the key factor for implementing human rights due diligence. The thesis also offers a preliminary evaluation of the Agent-Based Approach's strengths and limitations.
A Cambridge PhD thesis on modern slavery in NHS medical supply chains names DSRP theory, paired with an agent-based approach, as its analytical framework for 26 expert interviews across six European countries.
The thesis puts DSRP on the kind of problem the theory is built for. Where does a procurement system's responsibility end is a boundary question; an eighty-thousand-supplier chain sitting inside a health system of systems is a part-whole question; how cost pressure at the center propagates to a supplier's labor practices is a relationship question; whose account of responsibility counts is a perspective question. The headline finding, that complexity, power, and responsibility are emergent rather than local properties, is the sort of result the systems and relationship rules are meant to surface, and reaching it through interviews rather than argument is worth something. Two things cannot be checked from the repository record, which is all that is currently available: how the four rules were operationalized in coding the twenty-six interviews, and what analytic work DSRP did as against the Agent-Based Approach it is paired with. The abstract names both as the framework without dividing the labor between them.
Patterns it shows D, S, R, P
Shows it makes a difference
Added 2026-10-26
How to cite this Du Plessis, Lihani (2026). A Systems Approach to Ethical Public Procurement in the Medical Sector. University of Cambridge (PhD thesis, Apollo repository).