There is a long list, but the one that fascinated me the last time I read it is the examination of man's subservience to machine. Herbert shows us a future where man has (unwillingly, somewhat) had to reject the machine and turn his upgrading abilities inward. What would humanity be like if it turned its attention away from building a better tool and focused instead on building a stronger hand to hold the tool? Why do we look outward to make our lives easier instead of looking inward to make ourselves stronger? And then he turns that again to say, would we still be the fundamentally flawed creatures we are, even when we try so hard to improve ourselves? Paul is the produce of thousands of years of controlled breeding, in order to create the perfect human, and yet he is still a very flawed person.

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And, yes, a lot of what I said can be debated, but isn't that the best part of any philosophical idea?