Sir: My response to the science verses philosophy round table debate in issue 27 (which was great and very illuminating) is that the simplest and most important perspective was barely touched on and should be emphasized. Philosophy is (or should be) the search for truth by trying to incorporate all human knowledge and beliefs to some extent into an overall framework of ideas that logically holds water. In the sense that everyone does this to some degree when they naturally go through the process of establishing their individual 'world view' (however limited) from everything that they are exposed to in life, everyone does philosophy. Therefore at the individual level, these scientists cannot help but do science within the framework of philosophy, whether they like it or not! This is the most fundamental answer to the question "given the success of science, do we really need philosophy?", because no individual could even function enough to do science at all without his/her own uniquely acquired philosophy, or world view. Additionally, as was pointed out repeatedly in this debate, philosophy in general has historically gone before science in general by outlining fuzzy areas like consciousness before the scientists can dive in and objectify them.
David M. Petersen
The likely evolutionary path of the human race:
The 21st century needs its own philosophy; here it is:
My entire body of work is archived Here forever, (http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/
http://philosophy.dmpetersen.net) except for some documents in my storage space.