Mmm Hmmm... we shall see!!!!
I have a project I want you to do!
1. I want it "Fast"
2. I want it "Cheap"
3. I want it "Right"
Your response please.
I wouldn't want a philosopher to barbeque a hamburger for me either, but that's irrelevant. The assumptions upon which the natural sciences are based are determined by philosophy. Philosophy is therefore logically prior to the natural sciences.
For example, scientific endeavors depend upon certain assumptions such as the fact that the universe is comprehensible, that physical laws are uniform, that one can trust one's senses, that time progresses forward (that is, history is not literally cyclical). The reason why the natural sciences were fructified in the West is because of the influence of Christianity, particularly the influence of the Catholic Church, and even more particularly, because of the Church's dogmatic teaching regarding "Creation from nothing," as Stanley Jaki argues so persuasively.
In Christ and Science (p. 23), Jaki gives four reasons for modern science's unique birth in Christian Western Europe:Philosophy and theology are nice sciences to talk about, but rarely put food on the table, give you shelter from storms or enemies, etc.1. "Once more the Christian belief in the Creator allowed a break-through in thinking about nature. Only a truly transcendental Creator could be thought of as being powerful enough to create a nature with autonomous laws without his power over nature being thereby diminished. Once the basic among those laws were formulated science could develop on its own terms."
2. "The Christian idea of creation made still another crucially important contribution to the future of science. It consisted in putting all material beings on the same level as being mere creatures. Unlike in the pagan Greek cosmos, there could be no divine bodies in the Christian cosmos. All bodies, heavenly and terrestrial, were now on the same footing, on the same level. this made it eventually possible to assume that the motion of the moon and the fall of a body on earth could be governed by the same law of gravitation. The assumption would have been a sacrilege in the eyes of anyone in the Greek pantheistic tradition, or in any similar tradition in any of the ancient cultures."
3. "Finally, man figured in the Christian dogma of creation as a being specially created in the image of God. This image consisted both in man's rationality as somehow sharing in God's own rationality and in man's condition as an ethical being with eternal responsibility for his actions. Man's reflection on his own rationality had therefore to give him confidence that his created mind could fathom the rationality of the created realm."
4. "At the same time, the very createdness could caution man to guard agains the ever-present temptation to dictate to nature what it ought to be. The eventual rise of the experimental method owes much to that Christian matrix."
No, they're essential to a true education.
(Yes, I'm an engineer!)
I have a degree in mechanical engineering too. But if you want to read something truly challenging, try the Summa Theologica (and then consider that St. Thomas considered it theology for beginners).