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 Burns, C. E. and Mountney, Nigel P. and Hodgson, David Mark and Colombera, Luca
Year 2019
Publisher Journal of the Geological Society, vol. 176, no. 4, pp. 629–649
Kind of work article
Discipline Geology
Applied false
Read it at the publisher 10.1144/jgs2019-001
To propose a hierarchical classification of splay deposits, the sand-prone units within fine-grained floodplain successions, and to identify the controls on their stratal architecture.
Outcrop data from eleven exhumed sites in the Jurassic Morrison Formation and the Cretaceous Mesaverde Group (western USA), including 104 graphic logs (1,241 m cumulative) and 67 splay elements characterized in detail, with 11 complexes identified; satellite-image analysis of splays on nine modern rivers.
Field measurement of graphic logs and architectural characterization of splay bodies, with recognition criteria based on bounding surfaces, thinning and fining trends, and palaeocurrent variability; comparison with modern analogues; mapping of splay deposits from three previously studied successions onto the proposed scheme.
Splay deposits are organized into four tiers: lithofacies, beds, elements, and complexes. Single-bed splays were the most common type (about 60–71% across formations). Neslen Formation crevasse splays averaged about 1,072 m in width and 1.4 m in thickness; Morrison crevasse splays were smaller (about 181 m wide, 0.9 m thick). Compensational stacking was recognized in the ancient successions and progradational stacking only in the modern examples. Stratal architecture depends on the rate of local accommodation generation, floodplain topographic confinement, and the migration direction of the parent channel. Splays from other studied successions map onto the scheme despite differing terminology.
The study classifies floodplain splay deposits into four nested tiers, from individual lithofacies up to complexes, using outcrop data from two formations and modern river imagery. It also identifies what controls how these deposits stack.
The classification is a case of nested part-whole structure: lithofacies compose beds, beds compose elements, and elements compose complexes, with bounding surfaces and thinning and fining trends serving as the distinctions that mark each tier's edge. The reported controls on stacking (accommodation generation, confinement, channel migration) are relationships between the deposit and its depositional setting. The fit with distinctions is partly a matter of classification practice generally, and the paper does not treat the choice of tiers as perspective-dependent, so perspectives are not claimed.
Patterns it shows D, S, R
Shows the structure is there
Added 2026-10-28
How to cite this Burns, C. E. and Mountney, Nigel P. and Hodgson, David Mark and Colombera, Luca (2019). Stratigraphic architecture and hierarchy of fluvial overbank splay deposits. Journal of the Geological Society, vol. 176, no. 4, pp. 629–649.