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.
Damien Gagnier, 2026, Astronomy & Astrophysics — Astronomy
Patterns: Systems, Relationships
The finding shows that the force felt by an orbiting body (a part) depends on the global structure of the medium as a whole, not merely on the medium's local properties at the body's position, and that in multi-body systems one part's wake can substantially alter the force felt by another part.
Stratification was found to affect dynamical friction through the global structure of the acoustic wake rather than only through the local density, sound speed, and Mach number at the perturber's position, changing the radial force in amplitude and sign relative to homogeneous-medium predictions and yielding shorter inspiral times for giant-star envelope profiles; in double-perturber systems, a companion's wake substantially altered the radial force and reduced drag on the other body.
To quantify how a radially stratified (rather than homogeneous) gaseous stellar envelope alters the dynamical friction felt by a gravitating object on a curved orbit within it, relevant to common-envelope and planetary-engulfment inspirals.
Dynamical friction prescriptions used for common-envelope and planetary engulfment inspirals often assume a homogeneous medium and/or rectilinear perturber motion. A gravitating object embedded in a giant-star envelope instead excites an orbit-scale wake while moving on a curved orbit through a finite, radially stratified medium. We quantified the linear barotropic acoustic wake and the associated gravitational back-reaction for low-mass perturbers on circular orbits. We formulated the barotropic acoustic response of a weak point perturber on a circular orbit in a hydrostatic, spherically stratified gaseous medium. The enthalpy perturbation was expanded into spherical harmonics and Fourier modes. The force is written as an adjacent-multipole sum, with coefficients computed from the retarded acoustic Green function. We applied the formulation to single perturbers in power-law density profiles and giant-star envelope models, as well as to double perturbers in power-law density backgrounds. We find that stratification affects dynamical friction through the global structure of the wake, not only through the local density, sound speed, and Mach number at the perturber position. The radial component is set by the low-order, orbit-scale wake and can strongly differ in amplitude and sign from the homogeneous-medium result. The azimuthal component is also modified by stratification, but in the supersonic regime it retains the Coulomb-logarithmic sensitivity of the homogeneous problem. In double-perturber systems, the companion wake can substantially change the radial force and reduce the azimuthal drag on a given component, but, unlike the perturber's own wake, it has no local Coulomb-logarithmic contribution. For the adopted giant-star envelope profiles, the azimuthal drag exerted by the stratified wake gives shorter inspiral times than uniform-medium prescriptions evaluated with the same local background quantities. The gravitational back-reaction of the linear barotropic wake in stratified stellar envelopes combines a global acoustic response with a cutoff-sensitive drag contribution. The formulation provides a flexible tool for computing embedded-perturber wakes in prescribed radial stratifications and is a first step toward computationally efficient, self-consistent models of common-envelope and planetary-engulfment inspirals.
These researchers were not testing DSRP. The finding is theirs; the correspondence to DSRP is drawn by this site.