I wouldn't call it nonsensical, but I see your point on it being more of a philosophy.
The point of the article, that I got at least, was that emergence is a new way to look at data. As of right now most of science uses the atomism view to try and predict how certain trends will extrapolate from a data set. But what we have come to discover is that when systems merge and become very complex, we have to look at them differently.
Through lens of emergence we can see a separate happening taking place apart from its base parts, almost like the ghost in the machine concept. I do believe it is more of a philosophic concept, but in a scientific analyses it is necessary to understand when, how, and why we need to switch our perspectives when dealing with large and convoluted processes.
Oddly enough I’m a scientist, a Physical Chemist. My schooling included quite a bit on large data sets and how to deal with nothing behaving as you’d expect. Statistical Mechanics is pretty good at both of these things but not the only way to handle them. I agree that scientists shouldn’t get locked into a way of thinking. It’s very necessary to step back and look at things from as many angles as you can. Where things go awry is when we try to super impose a pattern that isn’t there. Or we ascribe intent/purpose when the observed result is just a result of chaos. Energy and chaos make the universe go around.
I like this comment. It is good to hear of a scientist who is not stuck in a certain way. For most of what I have seen many people in my courses were kind of ingrained with a certain viewpoint on how things operated. I began my studying with such a different mindset than what I came out of it with.
This seems nonsensical. We’ve imaged individual molecules and they adhere to the rules/models we have.
Emergence seems to be a philosophy not a scientific explanation. Yes I know philosophers were among the first scientists. Some became scientists and some stayed philosophers.