Gas laws

I think that when people consider how the body works, they assume that the laws and principles that determine physiologic processes are somehow "special". The fact is that we are made of the commonest elements--carbon, iron, hydrogen, oxygen--and utilize the basic laws of physics. For example, our breathing, which is the process by which we obtain that most essential of all elements, oxygen--utilizes the same gas laws that are used in ballooning! It's not "magic", it's simply adaptation to natural laws. If it weren't, we'd have died out long ago. Consider the gas laws today, and be grateful to Boyle and Dalton and Henry and Hooke and all those guys who figured them out! It wasn't until long after balloons were the rage in Europe that we learned how the gas laws that result in their graceful flying make us who we are as well.