Somewhere between the "real" and the "possible" lies biologist Stuart Alan Kauffman's contemplation of a "poised realm."

Kauffman, a theoretical biologist, complex-systems researcher and MacArthur Fellow, will discuss "Res Extensa, Res Potentia and the Poised Realm" at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Santa Fe Complex.

Kauffman was a faculty member in residence at the Santa Fe Institute until 1997, when he founded BiosGroup to market complexity-science software to major companies such as Ford, Boeing and Texas Instruments. He is a researcher and professor with the University of Vermont Complex Systems Center. He continues to work with SFI as an external professor.

In science, the "actual" would be energy and matter study in the form of soil, cells, atoms, waves and the like — the world of Isaac Newton. The possible would be the other "stuff," what Kauffman says Descartes called "mind stuff," such as perception and understanding.

"We have lived with scientific 'monism' since Newton," wrote Kauffman in a May posting at NPR's 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog. "Monism is the view, shared by virtually all scientists, that the world is made of one kind of 'stuff,' the Actual world of matter and energy and with some question marks, space and time and information."

"Aristotle was less sure, he toyed with the idea that both the Actual and the Possible were 'Real.' He called the Possible 'potentia' and meant a variety of things by Potentia," Kauffman wrote.

Kauffman's curiosity is peaked by the possible poised realm in between these two. How long might it last? What laws govern the system of the poised realm? And how would one study the poised realm?

Kauffman's working hypothesis, described in a blog post, is that the "poised realm" between the actual (the stuff we can see, touch, smell, hear) and the possible is consciousness.

Kauffman's research has explored the origin of life, developmental biology and evolutionary biology. His most recent book was Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason and Religion (2008, Basic Books).

If You Go

What: Santa Fe Institute external professor Stuart Alan Kauffman discusses the Poised Realm

When: Wednesday, 12:30 p.m.

Where: Santa Fe Complex, 632 Agua Fría St.


ON THE WEB

• Read more of Kauffman's blogs at www.npr.org; and scroll down to click on blogs, then click on Cosmos and Culture.