[kemist]

I have no background in any field that could help me understand the basics of this discussion. However your post makes me wonder if many internet discussions are victim to this same phenomenon.

Different levels of abstraction are presented to explain "why", they're understood differently by different people (due to varying expertise), which causes discussions to eventually spiral into what appears to be disagreement, but is actually different layers of detail. The layers may seem to be contradictory but are often related. Hence the term "arguing in circles".