Listen,
for instance, to Stephen Hawking in his The grand design
book: "How can we understand the world in which we find
ourselves? ... Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but
philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern
development in science, particularly physics." I didn’t
expect a statement like this from Hawking, not from Hawking. Is
there any physical equation which does not assume a philosophical
setup for the environment described by the equation? For example,
maybe Galileo did not comprehend that his law of inertial motion
require absolute space but Newton did and Newton had a problem with
that, a philosophical problem: if the force can act on the space how
it could be that space is not acting on the force? So, when Hawking
says "nothing can move faster than light, but that speed limit
does not apply to the expansion of space itself", is he aware
that he is talking philosophy?
And
there is more. "Each particle of matter has a corresponding
antiparticle. If they meet, they annihilate each other, leaving pure
energy", says Hawking. Energy of what or whom? Maybe God? Just
putting the adjective ‘pure’ does not secure the concept of
energy within physics. So, when Hawking says "It is not
necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the
universe going", he is contradicting himself. His ‘pure
energy’ reassembles rather well the Judeo-Christian concept of
soul leaving the body after physical death. Religion is a kind of
philosophy.