Systems Research and Behavioral Science

Syst. Res. 17, 459–468 (2000)

Ž Research Paper

The Nature of the Laws of Nature

Humberto Maturana*
F. Ciencias, Dpto. Biologia, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

We human beings live in the explanations of our existence as living beings. These expla-
nations of our existence include what we call the ‘laws of nature’. Though we name them
laws, we cannot claim that they have an existence independent of us. We human beings
do not exist in nature, nature arises with us, and we ourselves arise with it. In this dynamic
co-arising, we explain ourselves and our circumstances while operating as observers. The
laws of nature are abstractions of the regularities of our operation as living systems that
we distinguish as we explain our experiences with the coherences of our experiences.
Copyright Þ 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords explanations; observer; knowing; nature; structural determinism; language/

languaging

INTRODUCTION to which the reader may refer for more detailed

I want to indulge in what is for me a basic ques-
tion — namely, what is the nature of the laws of
nature? To do this I have to present to the reader
the fundaments for both the question and for
the answer that I shall propose. I shall begin by
talking about us observers, structural deter-
minism, language, and the operation of the ner-
vous system. After doing that I shall answer the
question about the laws of nature in a few para-
graphs, the content of which will be supported
by the earlier reflections, abstracted from my
work over several decades. My final reflections
about the nature of natural laws will, in turn,
recursively support these earlier reflections. This
paper is not intended as a complete treatment of
the ideas, rather only as sufficient to understand
them. Where appropriate, I shall cite publications
* Correspondence to: Humberto Maturana, F. Ciencias, Dpto. Biologia,
University of Chile, Casilla 653, Santiago, Chile.
treatment of the concepts.
A SEARCH FOR UNDERSTANDING
In our attempt to understand the world we live1
we generate explanations that would bring rest
to our questioning. But each moment of satis-
faction of our explanatory curiosity in our West-
ern culture is only a moment of rest, because that
which we accept as an explanation becomes the
starting point for new questions. Indeed, that
which we accept as valid as we accept an expla-
nation becomes a starting point for our further
doings, and as these expand in the flow of our
living new questions arise in us and we begin
again the explaining cycle. This happens again
1
Editor’s note: throughout this paper, the phrase ‘the world we live’
takes the word ‘live’ as a verb. The author intends that the phrase
evoke the notion that the world arises as a continuous present through
the epigenic process of our living.

Received 2 March 2000

Copyright Þ 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 7 June 2000
RESEARCH PAPER
and again unless, of course, we remain content
and do not ask further questions.
In the explanatory search for understanding
there have been three main attitudes, namely,
the search for truth, the search for operational
coherences, and the search for mythical causes
that stand beyond our domain of ordinary experi-
ences. The search for truth is basically concerned
with logical consistency in the manner of ques-
tioning, and the conservation of some a priori
notions, whose validity is treated as self-evident,
in the manner of answering. This attitude, when
concerned with reflexive questions about human
life, gives rise to philosophy, and when con-
cerned with the control of the doings of others
gives rise to ideologies as systems of compelling
truths. A search for operational coherences is not
the same as the search for truth. The search for
operational coherences is concerned with oper-
ational coherences in various domains in an atti-
tude that excludes other concerns, yet stands on
some implicit or explicit basic a priori notions that
can in principle be reflected upon. This attitude
gives rise to what we now call natural sciences.
The search for mythical causes stands on some
poetic non-ordinary experience as an accepted
starting point connecting us with what we see as
a more meaningful reality than our daily living.
There is yet another attitude which intends to
explain our experience of understanding by
explaining how we operate as observers through
asking reflexive questions about how we do what
we do. In this approach I answer these questions
by conserving the operational coherences of the
observer as a living system. This approach gives
rise to a mixing of philosophy and science. I shall
operate in this approach, and I refer the reader to
some of my publications for a background
beyond what I shall provide here (Maturana,
1988a, 1990). These different manners of explain-
ing, alone or mixed with each other in different
degrees, give rise to many different worlds or
manners of human living in which we may, or
may not, rest at peace. But if we do not rest at
peace we ask again more questions in the hope
that we will reach some final understanding,
either in some domain or in all domains. What
happens, of course, will depend on how basic the
questions that we ask are. But what seems a basic
Copyright 
c 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
460
Syst. Res.
question to someone may not be so basic to
another, and the matter remains open anyhow.
THE OBSERVER
When I speak of an ‘observer’ I connote the oper-
ation of observing as it takes place in the locus of
singular living system, not a living system that
is categorized as capable of observing. Thus the
observer is not a physical entity, and observing
is not a physical process. Observing, and hence
the observer, are relational biological processes
that take place in the realization of the living of
the kind of living beings that we human beings
are — that is, living beings which exist in lan-
guaging. Observing can only take place in a lan-
guaging being. Observing, as a relational process,
arises through the operation of physical molec-
ular processes in a different domain from these
and cannot be reduced to them because it is not
a molecular process. Furthermore, as the observer
and observing are relational processes, not enti-
ties, observing cannot be said to be embodied in
the molecular entities, or organisms, that realize
them.
There are people that would not accept what I
have just said, either because they think that what
living beings do, or some features of what living
systems do (such as consciousness), are an
expression of the properties of some fundamental
physical or spiritual kind of entity, and not the
result of a particular manner of operation of the
living systems as molecular systems. I think dif-
ferently, and I claim that biological phenomena
in general, and the observer and observing in
particular, are direct or indirect (that is, historical)
consequences of their existence and operation as
molecular autopoietic systems (Maturana, 1970,
1975, 1978, 1980; Maturana and Varela, 1988).
STRUCTURAL DETERMINISM
The life of a living system appears to us observers
as coherent with its circumstances of living, even
when we see what we did not expect. Not only
that: when we find some incoherence in the living
of a living system; what we do is to search for
Syst. Res. 17, 459–468 (2000)
Humberto Maturana
Syst. Res.
regularities in the domain of operation of the
living system which would make those oper-
ational incoherences coherent. I call attention to
living systems because we continuously encoun-
ter them (people, dogs, flies, bacteria) in our daily
living, and they exist mostly in operational
dimensions that are commensurate with our own.
It is in relation to them where we see the coher-
ences of existence in general and of our own exis-
tence in particular.
We live in the coherences of life processes, and
living systems in general appear to us as spon-
taneously living in the coherences of life
processes. Indeed, the coherences of life processes
do occur spontaneously, and it is through seeing
the spontaneous life processes in living systems
that we implicitly assume that all processes in the
world we live occur spontaneously. We modern
human beings do not question the spontaneity of
the sun rising, plants growing, or gravity opera-
ting. Moreover, it is through observing living sys-
tems in their living, and the non-living entities
with which they interact, that we see the coherent
interconnectedness of the whole world that they
live in, and we assume that all this also applies
to us as we operate as human beings in doing
what we do. And what do we do as human
beings? As languaging beings we distinguish
entities and relations as we abstract through our
living the world we live, and in doing so we
generate notions, entities and relations. This is a
recursive process in which each abstraction or
distinction appears as the ground for the next,
without requiring that its own ground be con-
sidered.
The observer and observing are not physical
entities but manners of operation of the lan-
guaging organisms that we human beings are. So
the observer and observing are relational entities
that exist in a relational space, not in a physical
(molecular) one. As observers we distinguish
what we distinguish as distinctions of relations
in our operation as languaging organisms. As
observers we distinguish ourselves as human
beings operating in observing as observers,
which is where we arise as the relational entities
we talk about. That we human beings ourselves
as doing the observing does not make the observ-
ing a physical process or entity.
Copyright 
c 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Nature of the Laws of Nature
RESEARCH PAPER
So, in general terms, all the situations,
elements, processes, or relations that we dis-
tinguish in our living as languaging beings, and
that we use in the description of what we dis-
tinguish, or in explaining what we may wish to
explain, arise as distinctions or as abstractions
of distinctions that we make of the operational
coherences of our living as human beings in the
course of observing and explaining our living as
observers. Given this, what we see as we dis-
tinguish living systems, is that they operate
according to how they are made in the dynamic
coherences of their components. As we make
these distinctions, we call the way living systems
are made their structure. Furthermore, what we
see when we distinguish living systems and their
domains of existence (their medium) is that both
living system and medium operate according to
the coherences of their structure. I call this man-
ner of operating according to the coherences of
structure structural determinism (Maturana, 1970,
1975). Structural determinism does not arise as
an a priori notion, or as an ontological assumption;
it arises as an abstraction that we as observers
make of the operational coherences of our living,
and can be expressed as follows: a structure deter-
mined system is a system such that all that hap-
pens in it or with it arises as a consequence of
its structural dynamics, and in which nothing
external to it can specify what happens in it, but
only triggers a change in its structure, determined
by its structure.
We human beings as living systems are struc-
ture determined systems, and as such deal only
with structure determined systems, and nothing
external to us can specify what happens in us or
with us. Structural determinism is neither an a
priori ontological notion, nor a deduction from
other more basic notions; rather it is an abstrac-
tion that the observer makes in his or her oper-
ation as a languaging living system of his or her
experiential (operational) coherences in the flow
of his or her living.
I do not have space here to expand these reflec-
tions, but I think that I have said enough to be
able to claim that whenever we make an expla-
nation, we use our tacit acceptance of the spon-
taneous dynamic structural coherence, which we
implicitly or explicitly distinguish as taking place
Syst. Res. 17, 459–468 (2000)
461
RESEARCH PAPER
in living systems, as a basic element in our expla-
nations. Furthermore, it is necessary to keep in
mind that the explanation of how we do what we
do, including the explanation of how we make
explanations, happens through out doings as lan-
guaging living systems that operate in observing.
And it is also necessary to keep in mind that as
we make these explanations, we must do so in
the understanding that we ourselves are structure
determined systems and nothing external to us
can tell us how it is. In these circumstances know-
ing does not, and cannot, refer to an independent
reality.
EXPLAINING
What we do when we explain, is to propose a
dynamic structural process or generative mech-
anism, that if it were to operate, would give rise
to the experience to be explained. If this is
accepted by the observer as doing what it claims
to do, it becomes henceforth the explanation of
the experience being explained. When in the pro-
cess of explaining the generative mechanism pro-
posed is accepted as doing what it claims to do,
all the operational coherences of the living of the
observer entailed in it become experiential
grounds for the further flow of living of the
observer. That is, we observers as living systems
that exist in languaging explain our experiences
with the coherences of our experiences.
We human beings as languaging living systems
explain abstractions of the operational coherences
of our living, with other abstractions of the oper-
ational coherences of our living. And as we do
that we can see that animals that do not live in
language as we do, do not explain their experi-
ences, but live in the flow of their living following
the path of the operational coherences of their
living.
Since the generative mechanism proposed in
the process of explaining must be accepted by the
observer according to how it satisfies his or her
listening (seeing), there are many different kinds
of explanations according to the different listen-
ing of different observers. Science is not an excep-
tion, and is defined as a domain of explanations
by the use of what I call the criterion of validation
Copyright 
c 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
462
Syst. Res.
of scientific explanations (Maturana, 1978, 1988a,
1988b). In these circumstances science, as a
domain of explanations, is the domain of living
of those human beings who use the criterion of
validation of scientific explanations to explain
their living, not a reference to an independent
reality.
LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGING
That which we connote as we speak of language
is usually seen in terms of what we do while
languaging and, therefore, we speak of it usually
as if it were an instrument that we use to com-
municate. Thus, it seems acceptable to say of lan-
guage that it is a symbolic system of
communication. But language cannot be explai-
ned in terms of notions such as communication
or symbolization because these notions refer to
operations that entail language. Communication
is a commentary about the flow of the interactions
between systems: if we see that in the flow of
the interactions between two persons there are
coordinations of behavior, we say that there is
communication between them. On the contrary,
if we see that they do not coordinate their
behaviors, we say that there is no communication.
Symbolization is also secondary to language
because it takes place in the explicit acceptance
that one particular operation of distinction will
participate in the flow of the coordinations of
behaviors in lieu of some other operation in such
a flow. It is because we human beings find our-
selves operating in language as our natural man-
ner of being that we live language as if this were
a transparent instrument by means of which we
coordinate our behaviors in the distinction and
handling of objects — as if these existed inde-
pendently from what we do with them — and we
do not see what we are doing as we language.
Because we live without seeing what we do as
we language, we do not see that what constitutes
our languaging is our living in a recursive flow
in coordinations of coordinations of doings, and
that objects arise as tokens of coordinations of
doings that obscure the doings they coordinate
in this recursive flow.
A recursion takes place whenever a circular or
Syst. Res. 17, 459–468 (2000)
Humberto Maturana
Syst. Res.
cyclical process is coupled to a linear one, that is,
when a circular or cyclical process is applied to
the consequences (linear relational displacement)
of its previous application. When there is recur-
sion, a new operational domain appears. For
example, walking appears when the circular or
cyclical movement of limbs, legs, cilia, etc.
becomes coupled with the linear displacement of
the surface that those limbs, legs, cilia, etc. touch.
Walking constitutes a new relational domain
with respect to the mere cyclical oscillation of the
appendages of an organism.
Objects arise in language in the first recursion
that constitutes languaging as operations in coor-
dinations of behaviors that in the flow of our
recursive coordinations of behavior stand as
operational tokens that hide the behaviors that
they coordinate (Maturana, 1978, 1988a). A mini-
mal operation in languaging in which we may
see what occurs takes place when one attempts
to procure a taxi through gestures. If a woman
meets the gaze of a taxi driver at the other side of
the street and makes a circular hand gesture to
which the taxi responds by turning around, and
then a second taxi comes faster and she takes it,
the first taxi driver may complain saying: ‘Why
did she do that when she had already asked me
to drive her!’
The complaint indicates that what had hap-
pened was an operation of coordination of coor-
dination of behaviors in which the taxi as a
carrying operation had arisen. The meeting of
the gazes constituted an interaction in which the
client and the taxi driver entered in an initial
coordination of behavior, while the gesture of the
client as seen by the taxi driver coordinated the
initial coordination in a flow that an observer
would call an act of hiring the taxi. That the com-
plaint of the taxi driver as the client took another
taxi is seen as legitimate reveals that what took
place was an operation that we, as languaging
beings, recognize as languaging. We human
beings, as languaging beings, living immersed in
languaging, do not easily see that in this episode
two things have happened: one is the flow in
coordinations of coordinations of behavior that
are not innate but are consensual (thus learned);
the second is that the taxi as a carrying device
arises in the coordination of coordination of
Copyright 
c 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Nature of the Laws of Nature
RESEARCH PAPER
behavior and is not an independent entity by
itself.
As an object arises in our distinctions it arises
in the domain in which it is distinguished as a
coordination of doings that coordinates doings.
Although an object exists in the domain of coor-
dinations of doings in which it arises, we live its
existence as if it were independent of our doings.
Thus a taxi exists as a material object in the
domain of coordinations of doing we call the
domain of material objects. To say that something
exists in language means that this something
arises in the domain of coordinations of doings
that language is, and that exists as a flow of coor-
dinations of doings.
What makes the example just presented a
recursive interaction is the coupling of the cyclical
dynamics constituted by the recurrent inter-
actions (through the meeting of the eyes and
through the gesture), with the linear dynamics
constituted by the displacement of the relation
that occurs in each interaction. The result is the
arising of the taxi as an object (operational token)
that hides the coordination of carrying. In each
recursion in the flow of coordinations of coor-
dinations of consensual behaviors (doings), dif-
ferent kinds of objects arise in the constitution of
a network of different domains of coordinations
of different kinds of doings, or what I call dif-
ferent domains of interobjectivity. A domain of
interobjectivity is not a domain of objects that
exist independently of the operation of the
observers in their recursive coordinations of
doings. It is a domain that arises and is con-
stituted in those recursive coordinations of
doings that constitute objects in the flow of coor-
dinations of coordinations of doings.
Languaging occurs in the flow of living to-
gether in a network of consensual coordinations
of consensual coordinations of behaviors
(doings), in any domain of behaviors (doings).
Consensuality is not agreement. Agreement
requires language as it takes place in the explicit
stipulation of some future coincident behavior,
and as such arises as a consequence of lang-
uaging. Consensuality takes place in the coherent
transformation of behavior of two or more organ-
isms as they live together, and occurs as an unin-
tended result of that living together.
Syst. Res. 17, 459–468 (2000)
463
RESEARCH PAPER
Consensuality does not require language, but the
recursion in consensual coordinations of
behavior gives rise to the new domain of exis-
tence that language is as the domain of
consensual coordinations of consensual
coordinations of behaviors.
Behaviors as relational dynamics that involve
both the organism and the medium are doings in
some domain or other, so language is in fact a
domain of recursive consensual coordinations of
doings. Accordingly, language is the new oper-
ational domain that arises when the cyclical
dynamics of consensual coordinations of doings
becomes coupled to the linear displacement of
the relations of doings of the participants that
those same consensual coordinations of doings
bring about. Languaging, then, occurs in the flow
of recursive coordinations of doings, not in any
isolated coordination of doings in particular.
As consensual coordinations of consensual
coordinations of doings or behaviors take place
in the living together of a group of organisms, and
language arises as a manner of living together in
a new operational domain that did not exist
before, all that we human beings do in language
emerges as a possibility with it. Languaging is
not a domain of abstract relations, nor is it a
system of symbols; it is a domain of recursive
consensual coordinations of doings that can take
place in any of the different domains of doings
that arise as new kinds of coordinations of doings.
As such language takes place in the domain of
doings of the languaging beings as they realize
their living as structure determined systems.
That languaging consists of a flow of coor-
dinations of coordinations of doings shows that
it occurs in the domain of regularities of doings in
the domain of doings in which language occurs,
namely the domain of our operation as organ-
isms. So the doings that happen in the flow of
languaging arise within the domain of oper-
ational coherences proper to the domain of
doings in which languaging takes place and
brings about. As we explain living, living systems
arise as molecular systems. However, molecules
are not independent objects in themselves, they
are objects in a domain of interobjectivity which
arises in the coordinations of doings of our living
together in languaging. This does not mean that
Copyright 
c 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
464
Syst. Res.
molecules are fantasies, rather it means that what
we would like to refer to as we speak of molecules
is not that which we bring about in our dis-
tinctions as languaging beings. And it means that
the background that we need for epistemological
reasons to support our explaining cannot be
spoken, and as it cannot be spoken, all that exists
is that which we bring about in the coordinations
of doings in language, as entities that arise in
languaging.
THE ORGANISM
Living systems arise as organisms (singular total-
ities) in the distinction of the observer in three
domains of operational coherences:
(1) the domain in which the observer sees the
composition of the living system and dis-
tinguishes its structure;
(2) the domain in which the observer sees the
living system as a totality in interactions with
a medium that also arises in his or her dis-
tinctions as a structure determined system;
(3) the domain in which the observer sees both
the living system as a totality and the medium
in which it interacts as such, seeing as well
that the organism and the medium constitute
together a larger structure determined system
that arises as an ecological unity.
The organism arises in the distinction of the
observer as a behaving or doing system in the
relational domain (2) in which it arises as a total-
ity in interactions with the medium. This is the
domain of behavior or doings of the organisms.
But the behavior or doing of the organism is a
dynamic relation between organism and medium
that involves both the organism and the medium
as it arises in the encounters between the organ-
ism and the medium. The understanding of the
organism by the observer takes place as he or she
sees the three domains in which the organism
operates, and through seeing them he or she
relates the internal dynamics of the organism
with the flow of its interactions with the medium
as the behavior takes place. Moreover, in doing
this the observer sees that the structure of the
Syst. Res. 17, 459–468 (2000)
Humberto Maturana
Syst. Res.
organism and the medium changes together
congruently.
THE NERVOUS SYSTEM
In an explanation the experience explained and
the generative mechanism giving rise to it also
occur in different experiential (operational)
domains. Namely, the domain of the experience
explained arises as a consequence of the oper-
ation of the generative mechanism in the domain
in which that takes place. These two domains do
not intersect, cannot be reduced one to the other,
and there is no logical relation between them. The
relation between those two domains is gener-
ative.
An additional general result of this is that dif-
ferent explanations give rise to different non-
intersecting operational domains that are vali-
dated through them. Moreover, generative
relations give rise to non-intersecting operational
domains which can also become independent
domains of explanations.
The domain of explanations, in which we see
ourselves as constituting a larger system, arises
in what I call a domain of interobjectivity. We as
observers live our distinction of the elements that
compose an organism as concrete entities, and
the elements that compose a behavior or doing,
as relations. It is in this space of relations that
interobjectivity takes place as a domain of recur-
sive coordinations of coordinations of behavior
that are lived by us as entities that constitute the
fundament for further recursions in the flow of
our coordinations of behaviors. Interobjectivity
takes place in the flow in which relations take
place — it is the happening of that flow, not a
commentary on it. Our own behavior as
observers takes place as a flow of dynamic
relations between us, as bodily organisms, and
the medium in which we realize ourselves in the
flow of our recursive coordinations of behaviors.
We observers, objects, and explanations all per-
tain to this domain — as such we and they do not
exist by themselves.
Our nervous system arises in our distinctions
as a neuronal network that operates as a com-
ponent of the organism as a structure determined
Copyright 
c 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Nature of the Laws of Nature
RESEARCH PAPER
system. Furthermore, the nervous system arises
in our distinctions constituted as a closed net-
work of neuronal elements that operates as a
closed network of changing relations of activities
between its neuronal components. As such the
nervous system arises in intersection with the
organism at its sensory and effector surfaces. The
organism interacts with the medium at its sensory
and effector surfaces, not at the nervous system,
so that the behavior is something that occurs in
the domain of operation of the organism, not of
the nervous system. As a result of the interactions
of the organism and the medium, the structure of
the organism, and of the nervous system that
intersects with it, undergo structural changes that
follow a course contingent to the flow of the inter-
actions of the organism. The nervous system does
not encounter the medium, it only undergoes a
continuous closed dynamics of changing
relations of activities that result in changing sen-
sory/effector correlations in the interactions of
the organism and the medium. An observer dis-
tinguishes this as behaviors or doings that take
place in the domain of interobjectivity that the
observer lives.
The nervous system does not break or tran-
scend the operation of the organism as a structure
determined system in which anything that an
observer may conceive external to it can only
trigger in it structural changes that are not speci-
fied by the trigger. The observer sees that as the
nervous system operates as a closed network of
changing relations of activities, it operates detect-
ing configurations of relations of activity within
itself. In the operation of the organism the sensory
effector correlations occur in a manner that is
proper to the flow of its behavior and doings as
a structure determined system. The result is that
an observer cannot distinguish, or claim to dis-
tinguish, anything in the operation of an organ-
ism that he or she can in any way deem to be
independent from its operation as a structure
determined system. This also applies to his or her
distinction of him or herself as he or she operates
in a domain of interobjectivity, generated in lan-
guage, in the flow of his or her living in language
with other observers. The flow of languaging,
that is, the generation of different domains and
metadomains of coordinations of behaviors, is
Syst. Res. 17, 459–468 (2000)
465
RESEARCH PAPER
made possible through the manner of operation
of the nervous system: detecting configurations
of activities within itself as these arise modulated
by the interactions of the organism.
MATRICES OF OPERATIONAL AND
STRUCTURAL COHERENCES
Due to the condition of being a molecular struc-
ture determined system, an observer cannot
claim that when he or she makes a distinction
he or she is distinguishing something that pre-
existed the operation of distinction that brought
it forth — all that a structure determined system
does is the result of its structural dynamics.
Nothing external to it can specify what it does.
Therefore, all that an observer can claim is that,
as he or she makes a distinction, the operation of
distinction that he or she makes specifies what he
or she brings forth with it. Similarly, the observer
cannot claim that the domain of existence in
which the distinguished entity arises pre-existed
its distinction. All that he or she can say is that as
he or she makes a distinction he or she brings
forth the entity distinguished together with its
domain of existence; both specified through his or
her operational coherences in his or her domain of
doings as a human being. That is, as an observer
distinguishes an entity, he or she brings forth the
entity together with the domain in which it exists
as such. But the observer de facto does more. As
he or she specifies through his or her operation
of distinction the matrix of operational coher-
ences that makes possible the entity dis-
tinguished and its domain of existence, the
observer also brings forth him or herself as the
agent that makes the distinction.
As living systems we human beings are struc-
ture determined systems; thus, as we operate in
our living as observers, we operate as structure
determined systems. External things that
impinge upon us cannot specify what happens in
us or to us, they can only trigger in us structural
changes determined by our structural dynamics.
Therefore, nothing that we do as observers viol-
ates, or can violate, our operation as structure
determined systems, and the act of distinction
that an observer performs cannot be used to claim
Copyright 
c 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
466
Syst. Res.
something about an external reality. All that the
act of distinction does is to bring forth something
that can only be claimed to arise constituted in
that act of distinction through what the observer
does.
We exist in these circumstances as human
beings, and as observers who distinguish them-
selves doing what they do, in a closed operational
dynamics in a closed domain of structural deter-
minism. It is in our operation in such closed struc-
tural dynamics that each of our distinctions
brings forth a matrix of operational coherences
implicitly defined as such by the coherences of
our doings as structure determined systems. In
other words, each distinction that we make, as
we operate as structure determined systems
within the domain of structural coherences in
which we arise as observers through our observ-
ing, constitutes a node in a structural (relational)
matrix that comes to have a presence through
this.
A system is a collection of elements inter-
connected in a matrix of relations such that any
action on one element affects all other elements
in it. Due to this manner of constitution of a
system, any local distinction, or the distinction
of several interconnected localities in a system,
entails the possibility of inducing the matrix of
relations that defines the system. Since an
observer, as a structure determined living system,
operates by constitution within the matrix of
structural determinism (matrix of operational
coherences) in which he or she makes at any
instance the distinction that he or she makes, he
or she necessarily implies in such a distinction
the matrix of operational coherences in which
that which distinguished, exists. Accordingly, if
the observer becomes aware of the matrix of oper-
ational coherences implied by his or her local
distinctions (of course, as he or she operates in
the structural coherences of his or her living) all
locales of such a matrix become, in principle,
accessible to his or her doings through his or
her reflective languaging operation within the
relational coherences of that matrix. Because the
distinctions and the reflections that an observer
makes constitutively take place in the matrix of
operational coherences specified by his or her
operation as a structure determined languaging
Syst. Res. 17, 459–468 (2000)
Humberto Maturana
Syst. Res.
system, his or her theoretical reflections and
mathematical formalisms (which take place as
operations in the matrix of operational coher-
ences in which the distinctions with which the
observer is concerned also take place) permit the
observer to compute all the changes that may
occur in the system which defined that matrix.
Is this a tautological situation? Yes, it is so!
All that occurs in the living of living systems is
tautological because living takes place only under
the realization of the relational conditions under
which living takes place. In this circumstance, an
observer can only distinguish what he or she can
do in the realization of his or her living as a
languaging being. But since the realization of the
living necessarily implies the matrix of relations
in which what is lived takes place, as it takes
place, an observer can in principle always
abstract such a matrix of relations by abstracting
the coherences of his or her living through his or
her doings, as a languaging being in the particular
domain of coordination of doings in which he or
she is languaging.
WHAT IS TO KNOW?
If we accept the question that demands an expla-
nation about ourselves by asking how we do
what we do as biological entities that operate
as observers observing, several things become
apparent:
(1) We do whatever we do as observers in living,
that is, in the praxis of living. If we stop living
we stop doing whatever we do: we exist in
the praxis of living.
(2) Whatever we do in our living happens to us in
our living, we do not do it. Strictly speaking,
living happens to us: we exist in the hap-
pening of living.
(3) That which we distinguish as happening to
us, with us, or in us, as we attend or reflect
upon what we do is what we call ‘experience’.
If we do not attend or reflect about what we
do or what happens to us or in us, we do not
experience. We experience as we reflect in
language distinguishing what happens in us,
with us or to us.
Copyright 
c 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Nature of the Laws of Nature
RESEARCH PAPER
(4) We human beings arise in existence as lan-
guaging beings as we distinguish and see our-
selves doing whatever we do. If we do not
reflect upon ourselves, we do not appear in
our experience, and we do not exist.
Indeed, if we do not ask about ourselves, the
observer and observing are taken as primary enti-
ties and processes that do not have to be explai-
ned. If we do not ask about ourselves we are
transparent to ourselves and we take our exis-
tence for granted. Yet, if we ask as observers
about how we do what we do as observers, and
we accept the question, we accept that our fea-
tures as observers are the result of our own oper-
ation as languaging beings, and we become
aware that we are not primary entities. That is, as
we accept the question about how we do what we
do, we arise in our experience as having presence
through our reflections in a questioning attitude
that shows that we only exist as a result of the
operational dynamics that gives origin to us;
operational dynamics that becomes apparent
through our operation as observers.
In these circumstances, to know is not a manner
of reference to entities that are assumed to exist
with independence from what we do. To know is
to do, and all human knowing occurs as doings
in the realization of our living in the domain of
interobjectivity that arises in our living in lang-
uage. Indeed, we claim that we know when we
claim that what we do as languaging beings in the
domain of interobjectivity is an adequate doing in
some particular circumstance according to what
we consider adequate doing in that circumstance.
Knowing is a manner of human living in inter-
objectivity, not a reference to a domain of entities,
notions, or relations, deemed to occur inde-
pendently of what we do.
LAWS OF NATURE
Nature and the laws of nature are notions con-
cerned with the explanation of experience, not
with the explanation of reality as a domain of
independent entities. What are nature and the
laws of nature then? From all that I have said, it
should be apparent that nature and the laws of
Syst. Res. 17, 459–468 (2000)
467
RESEARCH PAPER
nature arise in the domain of interobjectivity that
we observers in language live as operations in
the flow of languaging in which we observers
exist. Language is a domain of coordinations of
doings in the flow of our living as human beings
as we realize our living as living systems in the
domain of interobjectivity that we generate as we
live in languaging. From this perspective I would
like to restate what it is we are talking about — as
we explain the worlds that we live as languaging
living systems (human beings) — when we speak
of nature, and the laws of nature.
The laws of nature, in whatever domain we
may conceive them (physics, astronomy, biology,
chemistry, etc.), are abstractions of the regu-
larities (coherences) of our operation as living
systems that we distinguish as we explain our
experiences with the coherences of our experi-
ences. The laws of nature, therefore, refer to the
coherences of what we do as languaging beings
as nature arises as the domain of interobjectivity
in which we explain what we do. That is, the
notion of nature does not refer to anything that
we may imagine or conceive as existing with
independence of what we do as languaging
beings (human beings). So, we human beings do
not exist in nature, nature arises with us and we
ourselves arise with it as we explain the way in
which we are as we operate as observers. And
the laws of nature do not refer to anything inde-
pendent of what we do — they are our manner
of explaining our experiences with the coherences
of our experiences as we distinguish ourselves as
observers observing as we operate as languaging
living systems. Moreover, we ourselves arise as
explanations of the experience of our reflexive
distinction of ourselves in the domain of inter-
objectivity in which we exist as we operate as
observers in language.
That this is so may seem obvious enough after
one realizes that it is so, but the implications that
follow, if one accepts this, are not trivial:
We human beings exist as such in the expla-
Copyright 
c 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
468
Syst. Res.
nations of our existence as living systems. This
was my starting point which I adopted from the
perspective of my biological understanding. The
development of this essay has shown how it is
that this is indeed so. What is new is that now we
can see and understand how the physical domain
arises in our existence in interobjectivity as a man-
ner of explaining some of the regularities of our
operation as languaging living systems in the
flow of coordinations of coordinations of doings.
The laws of nature pertain to this domain; this is
their nature. Our difficulties arise when we begin
to use the ‘laws of nature’ as explanatory prin-
ciples, obscuring the coordinations of coor-
dinations of doings from which they arise.
REFERENCES
Maturana HR. 1970. Biology of cognition. BCL Report
9.0. Biological Computer Laboratory, Department of
Electrical Engineering, University of Illinois.
Maturana HR. 1975. The organization of the living: a
theory of the living organization. International Journal
of Man–Machine Studies 7: 313–332.
Maturana HR. 1978. Biology of language: the epis-
temology of reality. In Psychology and Biology of Lan-
guage and Thought, Miller G, Lenneberg E (eds).
Academic Press: New York.
Maturana HR. 1980. Biology of cognition. In Autopoiesis
and Cognition, The Realization of the Living, Maturana
HR, Varela J (eds). Boston Studies in the Philosophy
of Sciences, Vol. 42. D. Riedel: Boston, MA.
Maturana HR. 1988a. Reality: the search for objectivity
or the quest for a compelling argument. Irish Journal
of Psychology (issue on constructivism) 9(1): 25–82.
Maturana HR. 1988b. Ontology of observing: the bio-
logical foundations of self consciousness and the
physical domain of existence. In Texts in Cybernetic
Theory: An In-Depth Exploration of the Thought of Hum-
berto Maturana, William T. Powers, and Ernst von Gla-
sersfeld, Donaldson R (ed.). American Society for
Cybernetics: CA.
Maturana HR. 1990. Science and daily life: the ontology
of scientific explanations. In Selforganization: Portrait
of a Scientific Revolution, Krohn W, Kuppers G (eds).
Kluwer: Dordrecht.
Maturana HR, Varela FJ. 1988. The Tree of Knowledge.
Shambhala New Science Library: Boston, MA.
Syst. Res. 17, 459–468 (2000)
Humberto Maturana