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.
Collings et al., 2025, Ecology — Environment & Sustainability
Patterns: Relationships
A plant and its soil form a two-way causal loop -- the plant conditions the soil biota (action) and the conditioned soil reciprocally alters the plant's performance (reaction) -- whose sign and strength shift with environmental context.
Plant-soil feedback effects on pairwise plant coexistence changed direction and magnitude across environmental contexts, showing the plant->soil->plant loop is a context-dependent driver of community outcomes rather than a fixed one-way effect.
To quantify how environmental context modulates the reciprocal plant-soil feedback loop and its consequences for species coexistence.
Plant–soil feedbacks are thought to mediate outcomes of plant competition through microbially driven positive or negative feedback loops. Plant–microbe interactions are known to depend on the underlying environmental context, yet most efforts to understand how plant–soil feedbacks mediate species coexistence have not considered these context dependencies. Here, we use modern coexistence theory to assess how this environmental context‐dependence of plant–microbe interactions might influence plant coexistence, and through which species interactions environmental context‐dependencies are most likely to modify coexistence outcomes. First, we found that the component species interactions in a plant–soil feedback model vary in their relative effects, with microbes impacting fitness ratios more so than direct plant–plant interactions. We also found that linear effects of the environment on plant–soil feedbacks result in nonlinear changes in niche differences and fitness ratios, which can result in altered predictions for coexistence, shifting species pairs from regions of coexistence to competitive exclusion or even priority effects. Finally, we extended our model to simulate how environmental dependence of plant–soil feedbacks in a well‐studied invasive species, garlic mustard ( Alliaria petiolata ), may help explain invasion dynamics across environmental regions. We also discuss paths forward in empirically parameterizing context‐dependent coexistence models using greenhouse experiments. This work builds on recent efforts to integrate plant–soil feedback theory with modern coexistence theory, suggesting that context‐dependencies of plant–microbe interactions may more strongly alter fitness ratios compared to plant–plant interactions. Our results highlight how context‐dependent plant–soil feedbacks may help explain spatial and temporal variation in plant community dynamics and suggest that the underlying mechanism of these dynamics depends on the relative sensitivity of particular species interactions to the environmental gradient.
These researchers were not testing DSRP. The finding is theirs; the correspondence to DSRP is drawn by this site.