I think there's a bit of bait and switch involved. Natural philosophy (Descartes, Leibniz, Laplace...) was indeed very important to science, and it's no acciden

I think there's a bit of bait and switch involved. Natural philosophy (Descartes, Leibniz, Laplace...) was indeed very important to science, and it's no accident that the leading proponents were great scientists themselves. I'm certainly not discarding their philosophical ideas, even the weird ones like monads, because they turned out to be illuminating once and might do so again. On the other hand, modern philosophy is mostly derived from social thinkers (Locke, Hobbes...) who have repeatedly tried and failed to leave any mark on science. That, IMO, wasn't an accident either. The differences in attitude between the two original groups (rationalism vs empiricism) were very deep and interesting, though maybe a bit outside the scope of this comment. But if you simplify and fast forward to today, you get the modern "science vs philosophy" conflict, in which I have a clear favored side. On one hand, you have folks who believe in the power of the individual reasoning mind, and put a man on the Moon. On the other hand, you have folks who claim that all understanding is social, and cannot explain how a toaster works. (But they sure have a lot of ideas about society!)