Philosophy is inherent to the practice of Science (whether you know it or not)

Hi Holmes,As science has advanced, so has the philosophy of science. Thirty years ago I could be an evolutionary biologist with little knowledge of philosophy, but now I have to be able to assess (for example) the importance of a prior distribution on the posterior distribution in a bayesian analysis, and I have to worry about "species concepts" and the like.I get the impression that scientists use the parts of the philosophy of science that they find useful to their work, and ignore the rest. Science is routinely taught as a craft rather than as a philosophical enterprise (the "best" scientists are the ones who know how they should carry out science in order for it to be published in reputable journals). They grow off each other; today's hot topics in applied science result in tomorrow's philosophy articles - and journals.The practice of science is not the be-all and end-all of the philosophy of science; the philosophy of science does not merely describe and justify alternative scientific activities.But similarly, the philosophy of science does not simply direct scientific endeavour. Science will use philosophy when it is useful to do so. This is why the sociology of science (a branch of the philosophy of science, I guess) has virtually zero interst amongst practicing scientists - it simply isn't useful on a day-to-day basis.Science and philosophy exist in an uneasy alliance.Mick