Ah, BB ... we do have our little disagreements. But this is a big one, and we've both nibbled at it from time to time, without ever reaching any common agreement. You are assuming, incorrectly I think, that the whole is nothing more than a collection of its parts, and cannot naturally have properties which are different from them separately. In logic, this is known as a "category error", discussed (among many other places) HERE (you gotta scroll down about half way to find it).
Permit me to give you some quotes from Stephen J. Gould [gasp!] which come from this website: HERE
The primary fallacy of this argument has been recognized from the inception of this hoary debate. "Arising from" does not mean "reducible to," for all the reasons embodied in the old cliche that a whole can be more than the sum of its parts. To employ the technical parlance of two fields, philosophy describes this principle by the concept of "emergence," while science speaks of "nonlinear" or "nonadditive" interaction. In terms of building materials, a new entity may contain nothing beyond its constituent parts, each one of fully known composition and operation. But if, in forming the new entity, these constituent parts interact in a "nonlinear" fashion—that is, if the combined action of any two parts in the new entity yields something other than the sum of the effect of part one acting alone plus the effect of part two acting alone — then the new entity exhibits "emergent" properties that cannot be explained by the simple summation of the parts in question. Any new entity that has emergent properties — and I can't imagine anything very complex without such features—cannot, in principle, be explained by (reduced to) the structure and function of its building blocks.Please note that this definition of "emergence" includes no statement about the mystical, the ineffable, the unknowable, the spiritual, or the like—although the confusion of such a humdrum concept as nonlinearity with this familiar hit parade has long acted as the chief impediment to scientific understanding and acceptance of such a straightforward and commonsensical phenomenon. [snip]
I can't think of an earthly phenomenon more deeply intricate (for complex reasons of evolutionary mechanism and historical contingency)—and therefore more replete with nonlinear interactions and emergent features—than the human brain. [snip]
Dear Patrick, you have totally inverted my entire position on the “part-to-whole” problem which I have long been maintained here, as recently as my post of May 29th, “The Cosmos as Hologram.” You have stood my position on its very head, subjecting it to a 180-degree turn, to make me say what I never said. If you missed this article the first time around, you can read it here if you want to know where I stand on this matter:
My entire point in that exercise is that, if one could identify and examine all the parts constituting a given whole, and know absolutely everything about all the parts, still one would not know the properties of the whole of which they are constituting parts.
Which is precisely to say that any whole is more than the simple sum of its parts. Indeed, I have been jumping up and down, and screaming out loud in recent times, to draw attention to precisely this understanding.
Stephen Jay Gould’s (may he rest in peace) language of “emergence,” of “nonlinear” or “nonadditive interaction,” is exactly what I’m talking about in that essay.
There is no “category error” here.
If you and I have a “communication problem,” as seems likely, it seems to me it boils down to this:
Because I'm a Christian, a believer in God, you feel that nothing I say can be trusted -- because I'm "brainwashed."
What you fail to understand, however, is that I see science and religion as two separable enterprises. Still, it's true I do see science as the “junior partner” in this scenario; for there is more to universal truth than what science discerns.
But IMO FWIW science is absolutely necessary to human progress. It stands alone in its own field of expertise, and doesn’t “need” theological additions in order to be true in its own field. And shouldn’t have such additions – its method rules them out, in fact. (Thank you, Niels Bohr!!!)
But science is a “part” of a larger epistemic “whole.” The trick for the thinker is to understand the ways in which science and theology are “separate,” within their own respective fields of expertise – and to keep them separate for their respective purposes. Science analyzes existent reality; religion has a different purpose altogether, one that can be summed up under the head of transcendent reality.
Yet in the final analysis, together science and theology – Naturwissenschaft and Geisteswissenschaft -- conduce to form – as parts – the larger whole that we human beings experience as Reality.
Thanks for writing, Patrick – even though in so doing you have stood everything I have ever argued at Free Republic on its head.