== Extended quote from Godfrey-Smith == 

 "This kind of work is "reductionist" in a low-key sense of that term: the properties of whole systems are explained in terms of the properties of their parts, and how those parts are put together. Reductionism is sometimes associated with the idea that a whole system is "nothing but" its lower-lever parts, but this "nothing but" talk is usually quite misleading. A living system may be entirely composed out of a collection of parts, but the system will have features that none of the parts have. Rather than showing that the higher level activities do not exist, the point of mechanical explanation is usually showing how the higher-level features arise from the parts." 
 ::— Peter Godfrey-Smith: Philosophy of Biology, Chapter 2: Laws, Mechanisms, and Models, page 16 

 I have placed this excerpt here for the benefit of Snowden, who suspects the quote in the Intro was taken out of context.