In our contemporary neurobiology and much of the philosophy of mind post Descartes we are classical physics machines and either mindless, or mind is at best epiphenomenal and can have no consequences for the physical world. In this article, renowned scientist and thinker, Stuart Kauffman, discuss a large, interwoven set of topics. Much of what he says is highly speculative, some is testable, some is, at present, surely not. It is, he hopes, useful, to set these ideas forth for our consideration.