> explanations try to follow a neat chain of cause an effect. But [...] there isn't really a clear one. All these [...] are related to all the others, but not straightforwardly

There seems a pattern of misattributing pervasive failures of science education content design, to physical system complexity and student deficiency. A favorite of mine was a PhD thesis "We taught grade G young students common incoherent nonsense about atoms. Surprisingly, that's didn't work out well. We draw the obvious conclusion: students in G are developmentally incapable of understanding atoms." Which might even be valid... for a "regurgitate incoherence" definition of "understand atoms".

Here, I wonder if an atomistic explanation might work better? Could one craft a nicely accessible, coherent, transferably powerful, molecular superball mosh pit story of wings? The confusion and disagreements here sound a bit like "It's net molecular motion! No, surface impacts! No, differential surface impacts!". An abstraction/model fail, rather than underlying irreducible system complexity.