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.
Try a different term or clear the filters.
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 Rajalingham and DiCarlo
Year 2018
Publisher Neuron
Discipline Neuroscience
Read it at the publisher 10.1016/j.neuron.2019.02.001
What role does the inferotemporal cortex have in visual and object distingushing?
The inferotemporal cortex is a part of the brain where visual distinctions are made.
An example of someone finding a physical location in the brain for the D pattern.
In 2018, Rajalingham and DiCarlo examined the inferotemporal cortex and its role in visual processing and object Distinguishing. “Extensive research suggests that the inferior temporal (IT) population supports visual object recognition behavior… Moreover, inactivating different IT subregions resulted in different patterns of subtask deficits, predicted by each subregion’s neuronal object discriminability… Taken together, these results provide direct evidence that the IT cortex causally supports general core object recognition and that the underlying IT coding dimensions are topographically organized.” They conducted their research on object Distinction by “turning off” patches of the IT cortex using muscimol. They confirmed that areas/patches of the brain were devoted to face-recognition and also that the IT cortex is divided into areas that handle object recognition as well. When they turned off a patch, the subjects struggled with certain aspects of object recognition depending on the focus of the task. They wrote that, “individual neurons in the IT cortex are selective to complex visual features in images and exhibit remarkable tolerance to changes in viewing parameters.” The researchers made it clear that there was not a direct correlation between the task they struggled with and a corresponding area in the IT cortex. In other words, when a monkey struggled to Distinguish between cars (as a result of a turned off patch), that did not mean that there is a “car patch” in the IT cortex. They therefore stated that these findings hold for any kind of Distinction happening in the IT cortex, and they conclude that the IT cortex is an important area of the brain in which Distinctions are made. Finding a neurological placement in which Distinctions occur is significant, and this study provides evidence that the cognitive process of Distinction-making is not uniquely human, as the subjects in this study were monkeys. This drives the argument for the universality of the Distinction pattern of mind even further. In fact, once we are aware of the Distinctions we make, we begin to see examples of them all around us.
Patterns it shows D
How to cite this Rajalingham and DiCarlo (2018). Reversible Inactivation of Different Millimeter-Scale Regions of Primate IT Results in Different Patterns of Core Object Recognition Deficits. Neuron.