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 Bosi, Ferdinando and Hatert, Frédéric and Hålenius, Ulf and Pasero, Marco and Miyawaki, Ritsuro and Mills, Stuart J.
Year 2019
Publisher Mineralogical Magazine
Kind of work article
Discipline Geology
Secondary disciplines Chemistry
Applied false
Read it at the publisher 10.1180/mgm.2019.55
To set out how mineral species should be identified from complex compositions using an end-member formula and the dominant-valency rule.
A nomenclature procedure approved by the IMA Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification in May 2019, with a complementary site-total-charge approach for cases the rule does not handle.
The commission strongly recommends the dominant-valency rule for mineral nomenclature. The authors note that the dominant-end-member approach can be ambiguous because end-member proportions depend on the sequence of calculation. The dominant-valency rule can produce unbalanced end-member formulae when a coupled heterovalent substitution occurs at two sites alongside a substitution at a single site; in those cases they propose the site-total-charge approach.
The international body that names minerals sets out a rule for deciding which species a complex mineral composition belongs to, and a fallback method for the cases where the rule gives an unbalanced formula.
Species assignment is a matter of drawing category boundaries in compositional space, and the paper shows the boundary depends on the rule used: the older dominant-end-member approach gives sequence-dependent answers. The composition is analyzed as a whole built from crystallographic sites and the constituents occupying them, with end-members as the component parts, so part–whole structure carries the argument. Relationship (coupled substitution between sites) enters only as the case that breaks the rule. The abstract and publisher page were the only sources, so the fit rests on the authors' summary and not on the full derivation.
Patterns it shows D, S
Formal proof or model
Added 2026-11-02
How to cite this Bosi, Ferdinando and Hatert, Frédéric and Hålenius, Ulf and Pasero, Marco and Miyawaki, Ritsuro and Mills, Stuart J. (2019). On the application of the IMA−CNMNC dominant-valency rule to complex mineral compositions. Mineralogical Magazine.