Where Science and Philosophy seem to part ways is the on the universal acceptance of Empiricism.
That is to say to be a Scientist one has to at least tacitly accept Empiricsim while working. More whitin the Scientific community one does not argue for the truth of Empiricism and can therefore keep arguements away from Epistomology staying firmly within Metaphysics.
On the other hand Empiricism is not universaly accepted in the project of Philosophy. In fact there are many non-trivial attacks agianst it. So an Empiricist working in this enviroment will spend most of there time on a Epistomolical level rater than a Metaphysical one. This is why philosophy produces so few weather predictions, because the nature of weather is a metaphysical rater than epistemic question.
In this way I find Science to be in paralell structure with Theology. Theology accepts an Epistemic Theism (Divine Truth) much like Science accepts Epistomology. Of course Theology seems to concentrate more on Ethics haveing a fairly fully accepted Metaphysic.
I think Philosophy will continue to have many such spin-off studies as differnt basic theories wax and wain in popularity. These studies are always bound to have more results. A greater number of assumtions will always lead to a greater number of conclusions.
In the end Philosophy’s goal must be self destruction. To slowly fill the pool of deep questions until only shallow ones remian. Some people think this has already happend with the development of Science. Some think its impossible, that there is a wide drain on this pool. I tend to think we really don’t know and we just have to keep pouring concrete and wait and see if something happens.
