When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the word "emergence". In pop science, it was spoken in reverent tones. Never mind that they never gave a definition of it that didn't sound trivial -- the word was dripping with meaning and the promise of hidden wisdom.
I went to college and studied physics. I learned how the behavior of many atoms leads to thermodynamics and the properties of materials. I learned how elementary quantum mechanics leads to atomic physics and chemistry. I learned how the strong force gives rise to nuclei. I learned how the Standard Model produces everything on this list. I learned how, at each layer, the correspondence was fiendishly subtle, but the work of thousands of physicists over decades had built the bridges.
At the end of it, I was still dissatisfied, because I hadn't learned what emergence was. I'd see crackpots presenting their personal theories of everything, declaring that they knew what no physicist ever could, because their model had emergence. They knew about it, and we didn't. But I still didn't know what it was.
Then I dug deeper and it became obvious. Emergence is a beautiful idea that has always been present, in some form or another, in every field of science. It is so well-developed in some fields, such as particle physics, that it has become a suite of quantitative methods with incredible accuracy. I had been learning it the entire time, and now use it every day without a second thought. Meanwhile, "emergence" is a brand name. It's a specific word passed down over generations of pop science used to convey mystique. It's a tool some charlatans use to pretend they know more than they do.
No offense meant to the article, but I often hear people say they're most excited about some substanceless theory because it "has emergence", and this is part of why.