BIOLOGIST INTERESTED IN WAYS OF LOOKING AT CULTURE, SCIENCE.(Santa Fe/El Norte)

Byline: JEFF TOLLEFSON

For biologist and author Evelyn Fox Keller, science is an exercise in perspective, namely one's own.

"I'm interested in what counts as an explanation," she said Tuesday, noting that people with different backgrounds, both cultural and scientific, look at problems in different ways. "All of my work can be thought of as different ways of getting at that question."

She will speak tonight as part of the Santa Fe Institute's 2002 Public Lecture Series. The free event takes place at 7:30 p.m. in the James A. Little Theater at the New Mexico School for the Deaf.

Fox Keller is a professor of the history and philosophy of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also the author of several books, including A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock, a biography of the late biologist who won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Medicine in physiology or medicine. The book was published the same year.

Harvard University Press recently published her latest work, Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors and Machines. She plans to discuss themes in the book during her lecture today.

She said the book tracks the scientific view of biological development from its early days through the modern genetics era and now the rise of high-powered computers that allow advanced modeling. The book ends with a look at artificial life and the work of Chris Langton, who has conducted extensive research through the Santa Fe Institute, Fox Keller said.

"The central argument is that there is no definition ... carved in stone as to what makes a scientific explanation," she said. "We're all blind men feeling the elephant. And that's fine. I'm not saying there's a way to bring it all together, but it is interesting to see the different values" people bring to their work.

Fox Keller said she started thinking about these perspectives as a mathematical biologist in the late 1960s, when she saw the rift between her own field in modeling and the experimental biologists who got their hands dirty.

She said biologists need the mathematical/physics perspective but noted that modelers need to pay a little more attention to the real world as well. The good news, she said, is that more truly interdisciplinary work is under way now than ever.

"It's only recently that you begin to find some hybrid efforts taking place in the biology departments," she said. "What I mean by mathematical biology today is very different than what we were talking about 20 years ago."

The Santa Fe Institute's public lectures take place each month.

Elizabeth Jean Wood, a visiting researcher at the institute and associate professor of politics at New York University, will present the next lecture on May 13: "Ending Civil Conflicts: Durable Settlements or Wars." For information about the series, check the Internet site at (www.santafe.edu/sfi/events/publicLectures.html).