Science
This theme runs through several big questions. Here are the ones where it plays out.
The questions that illuminate it
Is science the only valid path to knowledge?
Is science the only road to truth, all the rest being mere opinion, or do art, ethics, and lived experience also yield truths it cannot reach? Making it the sole judge dismisses whole swaths of human life; denying it any special authority lets any belief pass itself off as knowledge. To take a position is to say what we accept as a valid source of truth.
How should natural phenomena be explained: by mechanisms, by purposes, or by a vital impulse?
Depending on whether we see blind causes, ends being pursued, or a life unfolding, nature becomes a mechanism with no purpose or a world reaching toward something. Behind the method of explanation, what is decided is the presence or absence of meaning in the living world.
How does science go about justifying its claims?
Science commands trust, but how exactly does it justify its claims: by proving them through experience, by exposing them to refutation, or by computing their probability? What we expect of scientific proof, and what separates science from mere belief, depends on it.
Does science describe the world as it is, or does it construct its own objects?
Do scientific theories unveil the real as it is, or are they useful constructions, marked by our concepts and our history? If they state the truth, science settles matters above mere opinion; if they construct, its authority is only one point of view among others. To take a position is to say what we can truly expect of scientific knowledge.
Can a whole be fully explained by its parts, or does it have irreducible properties?
Is understanding always a matter of breaking things into simpler elements, or do some realities, life, mind, have properties that vanish the moment we take them apart? If everything reduces to its parts, physics may one day explain it all; if wholes are irreducible, biology and psychology study something real that the sciences of the small miss. To take a position is to say how far explanation from below can reach.