Not everything is understood by being taken apart and reduced to constituent parts. Not everything is best understood by measurements.

No.

Aside from the fact that these non-science call-it-whatever-name-you-want's do this same separation and simplification that you're criticizing (albeit in a much more chaotic way), your fundamental position is atrocious from a philosophy of science perspective (also setting aside that philosophers never seem to get science). I mean you could've tried to push me in a lot of ways on the demarcation problem, but holism? I mean come on! You're basically jumping right to the agree to disagree phase.

Here's how it goes:

Not everything is understood by being taken apart and reduced to constituent parts.

Well you've already separated something from the rest of existence, so it can clearly be applied in some places, so what makes this other thing special? You're either going to say its complexity (in which case you're underestimating scientists) or some form of dualism (in which case you're talking to biologists... who literally understand how emergent properties work and can be used explained away all impressions of duality. Non-obvious I'll give you, but there's nothing irreducible about it. We deal with emergent systems every day.)

Not everything is best understood by measurements.

I... man, I'm trying not to be a complete dick here, but what is that even suppose to mean? You're going to understand something without ever having observations of it? Or more observations won't do you any good (for some magical reason)? How are you supposed to have a concept of the thing in the first place without observations? What's keeping more observations from gaining you more information (why must they all be duplicates?)?

After all, science should be about approaching the truth, not fitting it into boxes that are models we like.

Information is highly dependent upon its medium. This is why I criticize biologists who don't like math or computer science. If you want to approach truth you necessarily have to make you language more technical and more complex. That's the only legitimate way of making allowing your theories account for all the observations.

...

Now there is a point you make here that is worth discussing, and I think I know what you're trying to communicate, even though I seriously disagree with most the words you're using.

We started with the question "why do we value some lives more than others?"

Was this a question meant to be answered by science? That is not can science answer it, as there are very few things science can't answer (usually unprovables which this is not). This is did: we really want to ask science to answer it. For me, that's pretty simple: yes, yes I did. I find it more emotionally valuable to have that scientific information and explanation than some bs psychology one. What's great about emotionally based arguments is you don't have to justify them, they're neither right nor wrong, and they tell you about yourself (and that's only sort of, and also pretty much the limit of the information they can give you). Given the audience you're talking to, I'm going to guess they all feel pretty much the same way. But, in this case, to each's own. It's a personal thing.