Ah, well I concentrated on how a wing works, as that was the subject you brought up in your first post. How does a wing work, Denker gives a
summary and I don't think that is basic, and I find it hard to see how that can be made basic.
Now what you mention, the four forces, is very important. Knowing about the drag curve is very important as getting that wrong can kill you quite easily. Not knowing about circulation is neither here nor there, and you cannot explain lift without bringing that up. IMO
A very good thread.
Had another thought. When an airliner computer decides what angle of attack to fly at, does it do this using a fundamental understanding of how all the air molecules are reacting against the wing? Or does it just know that at this temp/pressure/aoa/velocity/power/whatever I will get this performance? If the autopilot doesn't need to know how lift works at an engineering level, why does a student pilot or even an ATP???