If you wish, you can say that Nature can also teach you...don't be too narrow in your definitions.

i believe when you "learn" something it is because someone else teaches you.....as opposed to discovering a new fact...once again physorg editors prove their ignorance.

i dont follow. you can learn things from a non human source, say i want to go outside and examine my oak tree in the back yard, i will learn more about it, yet no one taught it to me. i learned it on my own.

Tau, you cynical son of a gun...
Pretty correct - but still a cynic...:-)

I'm not quite sure how to say this so that people listen, but there is a very active and highly successful line of investigation ongoing at the University of Washington by Gerald Pollack which demonstrates that since the cytoplasm is in fact a gel, that there is no actual need for these pumps and channels. Gels induce ionic gradients all by themselves, with extreme efficiency actually. And Pollack is having incredible success explaining a whole host of systems within organisms using this conceptual approach. It not only explains why life needs water, but it also solves the problem that the cell membrane poses for the formation of life in the universe.

After reading his book (Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life), and having seen him speak now twice, it's become quite clear that his research on water and gels is extraordinarily important to the field of medicine.

Gerald Pollack's work also appears to leave us with an extremely testable claim: That experimentalists who have attempted to create life from inanimate matter should take an extremely careful look at the 270 nm infrared wavelength as a possible and critical missing element in their experiments. Pollack's work is *highly* suggestive that the human body routinely harvests energy at this frequency, and that this frequency plays an incredibly important role in the movement of blood through the circulatory system. It's also possibly suggestive of a very specific location for the emergence of life: within the illuminated, water-saturated atmospheres of brown dwarf stars (Wal Thornhill's theory).

People have been calling the inner ear a battery for decades which seems fair enough. I do agree with the comments regarding, Cells, Gels, and Gerald Pollack, he may not have it all right yet, but it is clear Mr. Pollack understands a heck of a lot more about the situation inside cells then the rest of the researchers.