Non-compliance is not only an epistemological error but a biological impossibility. This profound statement arises from the influence of Humberto Maturana’s revolutionary meta-theory of cognition. The definitions and significant implications of two major theoretical concepts of this meta-theory of cognition, namely structural determinism and objectivity-in-parenthesis, are discussed. These radical concepts challenge the approved North American Nursing Diagnostic Association’s nursing diagnosis of non-compliance Maturana’s theory reveals the impossibility of instructive interaction, leading the authors to conclude the non-existence of non-compliant families.

This essay is the result of our reflections over the course of many recursive conversations in the space of our collaboration at the Matriztic Institute in Santiago, Chile on the interplay of biology and culture on human living. We propose these Systemic and Meta-Systemic Laws (or Laws of Conservation) well aware that what we are saying with them also applies to the entire cosmos (from everyday living, to biology, to quantum physics and cosmology), which arises through the operational distinctions we make as human beings in our operating as observers explaining our living in the course of our living.