Oddly this seems to be a recent phenomenon. Early 20th century physicists were very well-read in philosophy, and their interpretations are accordingly sophisti

Oddly this seems to be a recent phenomenon. Early 20th century physicists were very well-read in philosophy, and their interpretations are accordingly sophisticated and rarely run into novice problems. Same with mathematicians; it's hard to even separate whether someone like Frege was a mathematician or philosopher. Bertrand Russell and Frege are part of philosophy of science, a relatively recent period in philosophy. It is widely accepted that philosophy of science was initiated by Immanuel Kant (late 18th century) in the Western world, and since then, philosophers have been trying to give solutions to some of the problems he first posed. What's more, most of the Western world at the end of the 18th century underwent a period called Enlightenment. This meant, all of a sudden, there was a huge emphasis on science and empiricism throughout all parts of society (Academia included, of course). Before that, 'philosophy of science' was known as (observations on) natural history, and then the term 'natural philosophy' was created. Thus, since mathematics is the language of science, this is why you can't/couldn't tell whether a philosopher of science was a mathematician or a philosopher. Even nowadays, most programmes (my own research covers Canada and major American universities) only offer philosophy of science courses, but many do not explicitly state 'philosophy of science'. I know this because I almost majored in philosophy, but I specifically wanted to go away from this branch and instead wanted to specialize in pre-Socratic philosophy, but there were no programmes dedicated to this. As for my personal opinion on students/teachers of science vs. arts, I feel many science students lack an appreciation of philosophy and how much it did for the sciences in its early years. Most science majors shove philosophy with the rest of the arts, but, as an arts major, philosophy is the hardest arts subject and can be equally demanding as a physics course, because it is the only subject which requires an extremely rigorous knowledge of science and arts. And there are simply very few people who hold such knowledge. Philosophy is the ultimate interdisciplinary subject where in a given class, you can talk about the laws of speed and light, 18th century subtexts vis-à-vis slavery, and biology (the growth process of plants and trees).