Somehow half the people think reductionism means "silly oversimplification", and the other half thinks emergence is some sort of magical thinking. And hardly ever do the twain meet.
However, Reductionism and Emergence are actually supposed to be complementary. A bit like the philosophical version of differentiation and integration if you will.
Reduction breaks complex things down into simpler parts which are easier to understand. Emergence takes simple parts and shows how they can form a complex system when organized.
If you do break a complex system down, you have to remember that you're only looking at some part of it. If you do have a bunch of parts, remember that they don't magically just form a complex system, you need to study the organization too.
If you want to fully understand a complex system (like eg. a single celled organism, a jellyfish, a human, or something even more complex like an entire ecosystem all at once), you're going to need both.
However, Reductionism and Emergence are actually supposed to be complementary. A bit like the philosophical version of differentiation and integration if you will.
Reduction breaks complex things down into simpler parts which are easier to understand. Emergence takes simple parts and shows how they can form a complex system when organized.
If you do break a complex system down, you have to remember that you're only looking at some part of it. If you do have a bunch of parts, remember that they don't magically just form a complex system, you need to study the organization too.
If you want to fully understand a complex system (like eg. a single celled organism, a jellyfish, a human, or something even more complex like an entire ecosystem all at once), you're going to need both.