I’m pretty out of my depth here, but I’ll echo what some people have said above. Before people started scientifically doing either one, would it have been obvious that a simple model would be very successful at predicting the behavior of, say, subatomic particles but would be very unsuccessful at predicting the weather? That is, it seems like there really are some phenomena where it is more true and others where it is less true that predictions can be generally and successfully made using straightforward intuitive models. It seems like the label “emergent” is just a (useful) label for the stuff where this can’t be done.
I’m pretty out of my depth here, but I’ll echo what some people have said above. Before people started scientifically doing either one, would it have been obvious that a simple model would be very successful at predicting the behavior of, say, subatomic particles but would be very unsuccessful at predicting the weather? That is, it seems like there really are some phenomena where it is more true and others where it is less true that predictions can be generally and successfully made using straightforward intuitive models. It seems like the label “emergent” is just a (useful) label for the stuff where this can’t be done.