> Nobody is hearing "the cell is a machine" and then goes off thinking "ah, what they clearly mean is that it is a whole lot of goop interacting in shocking com

> Nobody is hearing "the cell is a machine" and then goes off thinking "ah, what they clearly mean is that it is a whole lot of goop interacting in shocking complicated ways with each other all the time resembling literally nothing else a human calls a machine". Erm, a lot of the "nanomachine" people think exactly like this. Even simple things like "gears" do weird things an the nano level. Nevertheless, the biggest problems with the conception of a "cell" would be solved if we quit drawing them in 2D. Draw some cells as spheres. Draw muscle cells as slightly elongated cylinders. etc. If we drew the cells in 3D with chunks missing for labels, students would have a much better conception. Starting with: "Oh, hey, there isn't a huge amount of empty space--there's crap everywhere. These things are packed".