Two mistakes have been made in this thread, and both center on the same problem, a serious lack of understanding of the history and function of philosophy and science, as well as philosophy in science.
On one hand there is a lack of understanding that methodological naturalism as a tool has been given so much empirical support that it is currently the best viable tool (not to mention how it works in application) for research, and on the other hand that MN is philosophical in nature and as it underlies all of modern science means that philosophy of science is important in all scientific research.
Given that the first has been dealt with in good measure and the latter some strange level of acclaim, I will focus on the latter.
It was asserted that philosophy of science has no relevance to how science is practiced and an example given that one would not quote popper rather than evidence in a research article. While the latter is true, the former is not.
Modern scientists do not generally think about the philosophical paradigm they are working within, much as researchers 100s and 1000s of years ago did not. They work within what are established models of action&result (or "evidence"), and conclusion. What ties those things together now as then is most certainly logic and a philosophical model.
Before methodological naturalism was developed and proven through use, science was known only as natural philosophy. While many researchers labored as technicians in the sense that CF discussed goes on today, philosophy of how to conduct scientific research was more integrated with the technical because a strongly proven method had not yet been developed. Even those wanting to just get on with their work, had to think a bit about what they were doing.
With the establishment of methodological naturalism as a successful tool of investigation, such researchers had to spend less time pondering and so could spend more time being technical operators. That is when science emerged as something separate from philosophy itself. One could view scientists as the subset of natural philosophers who have accepted MN as the best research paradigm, and are now applying it regularly.
However, just because modern scientists do not have to think about such things regularly, does not mean that philosophy of science does not have relevance and cannot actually have impact on scientific models.
That is like a mechanic noting that all he has to do is drain oil and replace hoses, and so there is no such thing as engineering involved with cars. Or a professional fighter saying that he just "punches that way" and so there is no philosophy behind the martial art he is applying.
Unfortunately that illusion appears to be becoming more commonplace, which is likely why there is increasingly bad science... and scientists. People have lost the fact that results may actually have more than one meaning and philosophical paradigms themselves explored. Science is not a plug n play system that has always been and will always remain the same.
A good example of this would be relativity. While Einstein worked as an MN technician for his work on photoelectric effects, his theory of relativity was in essence purely philosophy of science. It did not seek to alter MN as the working model for collecting evidence to draw conclusions, but did alter how to view evidence as related to other evidence within the world given less than "normal" conditions.
Science is philosophy and requires philosophy. One does not need to quote philosophers in order to come to a conclusion, but will actually use philosophical methods within a philosophical paradigm all along the way.
For those that don't think so, look at what science work you do, imagine what a researcher would have done 500 years ago to investigate that same phenomena, and then what bridged his method and yours.
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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