"Science" is not one enterprise. Read Thomas Kuhn in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." He divides science into two categories. The first is normal scie

"Science" is not one enterprise. Read Thomas Kuhn in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." He divides science into two categories. The first is normal science, which is a period where the basic assumptions have been set, and scientists work within defined parameters to understand nature. In this period philosophy of not very relevant. Kuhn says that this works well for a while, until there builds up a collection of anomalies that result in the second type of science: revolutionary science. For a short while, people start to question fundamental assumptions about their world and this results in a "paradigm shift". In this mode of science, philosophy has always been relevant. The philosopher Ernst Mach was relevant to Einstein, for example. In our present age, we are at the stage of normal science started by Einstein and the quantum physicists. But anomalies have started building up. And when we enter into the new phase of revolutionary science, as happens every few hundred years, we'll see philosophy be relevant once more.