  Citation: Cabrera, D.; Cabrera, L.; Cabrera, E. Systems Organize Information in Mind and Nature: Empirical Findings of Part-Whole Systems (S) in Cognitive and Material Complexity. Systems 2022, 10, 44. https://doi.org/10.3390/ systems10020044 Academic Editor: William T. Scherer Received: 24 January 2022 Accepted: 1 April 2022 Published: 5 April 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). systems Article Systems Organize Information in Mind and Nature: Empirical Findings of Part-Whole Systems (S) in Cognitive and Material Complexity Derek Cabrera 1,2,*,† , Laura Cabrera 1,2,† and Elena Cabrera 2,† 1 Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, Cornell Institute for Public Affairs and SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA; lac19@cornell.edu 2 Cabrera Research Lab., Ithaca, NY 14850, USA; eac272@cornell.edu * Correspondence: cabrera@cornell.edu † These authors contributed equally to this work. Abstract: Part-whole Systems (S) structure is foundational to a diverse array of phenomena such as belonging and containment, networks, statistics, reductionism, holism, etc. and is extremely similar if not synonymous with sets, sorts, groups, combinations and combinatorics, clusters, etc. In Cabrera (1998), part-whole Systems (S) or “S-rule” is established as one of four universals for the organization of information and thus is foundational to systems and systems thinking as well as the consilience of knowledge. In this paper, seven empirical studies are presented in which (unless otherwise noted) subjects completed a task. Ranging from n = 407 to n = 34,398, the sample sizes vary for each study but are generalizeable to a normal distribution of the US population. With high statistical significance, the results of these studies support the predictions made by DSRP Theory regarding part-whole Systems (a.k.a., “S-rule”) including: the universality of S-rule as an observable phenomenon in both mind (cognitive complexity) and nature (ontological complexity) (i.e., parallelism); the internal structures and dynamics of S-rule; S-rule’s mutual dependencies on other universals of DSRP (Distinctions, Systems, Relationships, and Perspectives (i.e., Distinctions, Relationships, and Perspectives); the role S-rule plays in making structural predictions; and, S-rule’s efficacy as a metacognitive skill. In conclusion, these data suggest the observable and empirical existence, universality, efficacy, and parallelism (between cognitive and ontological complexity) of part-whole Systems (S). Keywords: systems; part-whole; reductionism; holism; universals; cognitive complexity; systems thinking; DSRP Theory; ontological complexity; systems science 1. Introduction This research affirms the existence of the part-whole Systems (S) construct as is shown in several prior research studies. In his part-whole categorization studies, Anderson [1] found that groupings of objects occurred as a result of linguistic, feature, or function. Our research extends this idea to generalize how people utilize any idea (not merely linguistic, form or function) into meaningful groupings—that is that part-whole groupings (S) are co-created along with perspective (P). In our studies, this is the case when the perspectival cue was imposed by the researchers as well as when no cue was provided. This research also builds on Moony (1951) [2] by showing that relationships (R) are necessary for part- whole Systems (S) to occur and therefore must be considered as necessary and sufficient “simple rules” required for part-whole to exist (i.e., expanding content validity criteria). Building off of Liberman et al.’s study [3], we see further evidence that part-whole Systems (S) are not dependent on language only. These studies also provide additional support to the existence of part-whole groupings as shown by Muehlhuas et al.’s research [4] and Pellegrino (2001) [5]. Furthermore, these studies build upon Baron-Cohen et al.’s (2009) [6] research showing the possible beneficial effects of part-whole Systems (S) to what would be Systems 2022, 10, 44. https://doi.org/10.3390/systems10020044 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/systems