I'm not sure that is a satisfying critique. If I'm reading you right, you seem to be taking a particulate or reductionist view (apologies if not). This is also a well known battle between particle physicists and others, say condensed matter physicists, like P. W. Anderson. In that context, he was a fan of the "more is different" approach which basically said that certain complex behavior can't be understood by simply breaking things down to their constituent parts, that emergent behavior (more) is indeed different and needs different approaches. His paper and many writings say it better.

https://cse-robotics.engr.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/ander...