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.
Eunkwang Seo, Christopher P. Dinkel, 2026, Strategic Management Journal — Business & Management
Patterns: Systems, Relationships
The finding shows that a change in the legal relationship governing knowledge protection reshapes how a firm's innovation activity is decomposed into more or less separable modules, with the reorganization running through a relational mechanism—the network position of new hires.
Increased trade secret protection was negatively associated with the modularity of firms' innovation activities, an effect that was stronger for firms with superior technologies or those colocated with competitors and weaker where other appropriability mechanisms were effective, with increased betweenness centrality of new hires identified as an underlying mechanism.
To empirically test the theorized relationship between legal knowledge protection and the modularity of firms' internal innovation activities.
Research Summary: Strategy scholars have theoretically explored the relationship between legal knowledge protection and modularity of innovation activities in firms, but this relationship has yet to be empirically tested in the literature. Leveraging state-level changes in US trade secrecy law and using a network modularity measure, this paper examines how trade secret protection affects the modularity of firms' innovation activities. Analyzing intrafirm inventor collaboration patterns in US patent data from 783 high-tech firms between 1976 and 2017, we find that increased trade secret protection is negatively associated with the modularity of innovation activities within firms. This effect is more pronounced for firms with superior technologies and those geographically collocated with competitors—factors that enhance firms' knowledge appropriability concerns—and less pronounced for firms in industries where alternative appropriability mechanisms are highly effective. Moreover, our findings suggest that the increased betweenness centrality of new hires (skilled and junior) serves as an important underlying mechanism for the treatment effect. These results contribute to the literature by illuminating how firms strategize their internal innovation activities for knowledge protection and by underscoring its underlying mechanism. Managerial Summary: Firms often modularize innovation activities to safeguard proprietary knowledge, but this approach can undermine innovation performance by restricting knowledge integration within organizations. This study demonstrates that stronger legal mechanisms alleviating firms' knowledge protection concerns, such as increased trade secret protection, encourage firms to adopt a less modularized, more integrated innovation system. Furthermore, we find that under such protections, firms are more likely to position new hires, including both skilled and junior employees, in central roles to connect innovation communities within the organization. These findings offer valuable insights for managers, illustrating how knowledge protection concerns can shape the structure of firms' innovation activities.
These researchers were not testing DSRP. The finding is theirs; the correspondence to DSRP is drawn by this site.