Scientists are doing amazing work figuring out how this stuff is happening.  But philosophy is just as important, as someone needs to ask why?  Why do stars burn like they do?  Why do atoms fuse together when they are compressed?  Is this behavior hard coded into the atom or does it learn it?  What causes gravitational collapse?  Sometimes asking questions that you are fairly certain will result in wrong answers spurs thought that leads to answers where you least expect them.

Some would argue that these are questions a physicist would ask.  True, but when the physicist is asking questions like this, he is essentially a philosopher, that is a lover of wisdom.  There are also many questions that physics, chemistry, or biology cannot answer alone.  Why does the universe exist?  What is its purpose?  Does it even have a purpose?  Is its purpose our ultimate destruction?

How does the behavior of atoms fit in to that purpose?  We as humans, if we have a purpose, have a funny way of showing it, because we all behave in a different way.  Are we all behaving in the best interest of the universe or some other greater entity, or are we behaving in the interest of atoms, strings, or some other lesser entity, or is there no purpose at all?  We keep coming back to the gut microbes that control our thoughts.  This is why philosophy needs to be more connected to the sciences and vice versa.  We think (or rather our gut microbes are making us think) we know a lot of things, but there is so much more we have yet to discover.

And think about this.  For much of human history our scientific understanding was flawed (according to our contemporary theories).  It was not until the Renaissance that the thought that everything is made of four different things (fire, earth, water, and air) was discredited.  Are we still just as lost as we were back then?  Does looking at video of the sun validate our contemporary beliefs?  Or what of the fact that our four states of matter (plasma, solid, liquid, and gas) closely resemble the classical elements?

Consider quantum mechanics' M-theory and Plato's Allegory of the Cave.  Would we be able to understand an eleven-dimensional world had we not been acquainted with the Allegory beforehand?  I do not know, but philosophy and physics have had quite the relationship in their short histories.  I do wish we start viewing the two as equals.