There is no such thing as philosophy-free science. Scientific pratice is impossible without an underlying philosophy. Every scientist is also a philosopher, whether they want it or not, whether they admit it or hide it. When scientists claim to have no philosophy, they are usually not free of one; they are simply relying on an unexamined and implicit philosophy. This is because:

1. Scientific practice rests on philosophical (metaphysical, epistemological and even ethical) axioms that it cannot justify by its own methods. These include the existence of an external world, the uniformity and regularity of nature, the reliability of our sensory apparatus and reasoning faculties, and the trustworthiness of memory and inductive inference. While these assumptions may be endorsed differently according to the scientist, they amount, in essence, to a shared commitment to the idea of a natural, orderly, and coherent world that exists independently of our minds and is accessible through sensory experience and human reason. This is not a scientific result, but the very precondition that make scientific inquiry possible in the first place.
2. Science does not tell us anything without an underlying philosophy, and if it does, it’s because the philosophy is hidden. Scientific theories never speak for themselves; they require interpretation to determine what they say about nature. Physics alone, for instance, does not tell us that reality is physical — that’s the job of metaphysics!

For these reasons, science is not philosophically neutral: it embodies a worldview and thus forms a school of thought in its own right, much like Platonism. At its core, science remains natural philosophy; it is an particular form of philosophical inquiry, based upon experimentation and observation.

Thus, there is no real demarcation between science and philosophy. In fact, separating science from philosophy amounts to advocating scientism, i.e. the belief that science is our only viable source of knowledge about the world and can answer all questions, thus rejecting metaphysics, ethics, art, poetry and so on. But philosophy includes science: it encompasses all ways of acquiring knowledge, of extending the limits of our representation of the world. (The division of knowledge into specialiazed disciplines is a social construction, created for practical administrative reasons.)

The only real separation is historical, social, and economic. In the West, science was long understood as a branch of philosophy, known as “natural philosophy.” Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and the title of « PhD » (meaning « Doctorate of Philosophy ») exemplify this unity that once existed between science and metaphysics. The rupture occurred only in the modern period, when science gradually detached itself from metaphysical reflection and moved toward practical applications, calculation, utility, and predictive success.

This shift arose from socio-historical forces:

• the rise of capitalism and industrialisation, which demanded practical and profitable applications of knowledge.
• the rise of the modern secular state-nation:

• increasing specialization & division of labor, which reduced the perceived relevance of philosophical reflection in day-to-day research and fragmented knowledge into administratively distinct disciplines. Frangmentation of knowledge.

• the professionalization of science through specialized careers, journals, and institutions. Institutionalization.

Thus, what appears today as an epistemic boundary is thus largely an institutional one: modern universities place science and philosophy in different departments, as if they were fundamentally distinct. But this reflects administrative organization, not the structure of knowledge itself. Science and philosophy are separated by academic structures: training pathways, departmental borders, funding mechanisms, and professional roles.

POWER has separated science from philosophy.

The Hessen–Grossman thesis: the rise of modern science cannot be understood apart from the material, technological, and economic conditions of early capitalism. Scientific concepts emerged in response to practical problems in industry, mining, navigation, and machinery, and that the mechanistic worldview reflected the needs and structures of capitalist production rather than purely abstract intellectual progress. Newtonian science was not an isolated triumph of genius but a product of its historical moment: shaped by labor, technology, and social organization.