[dilawar]

Hmm..

Hodgin and Huxley did ground-breaking work on squid's giant axon and modelled neural activity. They had multiple parameters extracted from 'curve fitting' of recorded potential and injected currents which were much later mapped to sodium channels. Similarly, another process to potassium channels.

I woudnt worry too much having multiple parameters -- even four when 3 can't just explain the model.

[nyssos]

Neuron anatomy is the product of hundreds of millions of years of brute contingency. There are reasons why it can't be certain ways (organisms that were that way [would have] died or failed to reproduce) but no reason whatsoever why it had to be exactly this way. It didn't, there are plenty of other ways that nerves could have worked, this is just the way they actually do.

The physics equivalent is something like eternal inflation as an explanation for apparent fine-tuning - except that even if it's correct it's still absolutely nowhere near as complex or as contingent as biology.