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 Duhamel, Marie and Salzet, Michel
Year 2025
Publisher Frontiers in Immunology
Kind of work article
Discipline Medicine
Secondary disciplines Biology
Applied false
Read it at the publisher 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1595764
To review whether the self/nonself model of immunity, dominant from roughly 1950 to the early 1980s, still holds as the organizing principle of immunology.
A narrative review of the immunological literature from the early twentieth century to the present, including Burnet's clonal selection theory, Janeway's pattern recognition, Matzinger's danger model, Pradeu's continuous immune self, and work on trained immunity.
Mini review organized historically: foundations before mid-century, mid-century codification of the self-nonself paradigm, challenges to it, and an integrative synthesis.
The authors conclude that the boundary between self and nonself is neither absolute nor permanent but is dynamically regulated. Maternal-fetal tolerance, microchimerism, commensal microbiota and the virome, trained innate immunity, and damage signaling show that immune responses depend less on foreignness than on context. Self/nonself reasoning remains useful in transplantation and autoimmunity. The authors describe the field as in a period of revision and expansion toward a contextual, integrative model.
A review of how immunology's long-standing rule that the body attacks the foreign and tolerates the self gave way to a view in which the response depends on developmental, microbial and damage context.
The review traces the replacement of a single self/nonself boundary with a context-dependent one, which bears most directly on distinctions: where the line is drawn changes with developmental stage, microbial partners and tissue state, and the authors keep the line as a working tool for transplantation and autoimmunity. Perspectives enter because the same cell or antigen is tolerated or attacked depending on the vantage of the responding system and its context. Relationships carry weight in the microbiome and danger-signal accounts, where immune function is explained by interactions with commensals and damaged tissue. Caveats: this is a narrative mini review rather than an empirical test, and the authors do not formalize the patterns; the perspective reading is an interpretation of their emphasis on context.
Patterns it shows D, R, P
Shows the structure is there
Added 2026-10-26
How to cite this Duhamel, Marie and Salzet, Michel (2025). Self or nonself: end of a dogma?. Frontiers in Immunology.