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 Harris et al.
Year 1996
Publisher Cognition
Discipline Human Development
Read it at the publisher 10.1016/S0010-0277(96)00715-9
To research children's causal thinking.
The children were able to identify the protagonist's failure to choose a different course of action as the cause of the mistake. In the experimental stories, the kids chose to focus on the rejection of the alternative option.
Overall, this research demonstrates that young children have the ability to recognize and articulate the action and reactions within Relationships.
There is a widespread tendency to think of relationships as one thing leading to another, or cause and effect. Harris et al 1996 wrote that, “research on children's causal thinking has emphasized the perception of temporal and spatial contiguity between cause and effect.” Three experiments were designed to test a child’s ability and capacity for counterfactual thinking. Counterfactual thinking refers to the human tendency to create possible alternatives to events that have already occurred that are contrary to what actually happened. This is manifested in statements like "What if?" and "If I had only...". It is our desire to entertain how things could have been different, literally, counter to the facts of how things happened in reality.
In the first experiment, “children aged 3-5 years observed a sequence such as A causing B.” The children were able to accurately reply to a question relating to a counterfactual sequence (for example: "What if A had not occurred, then B or not B?"). For the second experiment, the children were asked about “two counterfactual antecedents”, one that would not have caused B, and one that would have also caused B. The children were able to differentiate between both types of antecedent. In the third experiment, children were told stories where the protagonist chose a course of action that either, “led to a minor mishap (e.g., drawing with a black pen and getting inky fingers), having rejected an option that would have prevented it in experimental stories (e.g., using a pencil) or an option that would have led to an equivalent outcome in control stories (e.g., using a blue pen).” The children were able to identify the protagonist's failure to choose a different course of action as the cause of the mistake. In the experimental stories, the kids chose to focus on the rejection of the alternative option. Overall, this research demonstrates that young children have the ability to recognize and articulate the action and reactions within Relationships.
Patterns it shows R
How to cite this Harris et al. (1996). Children's use of counterfactual thinking in causal reasoning. Cognition.