This is very well said. I’m sure you’re right that most scientists are methodological (pragmatic) naturalists, not metaphysical ones, and that they’re pragmatic empiricists, with no idealistic commitments.

But this is all quite slippery too. When does pragmatic coyness start to look like evasiveness? When does appealing to scientific success begin to look an appeal to mere power? The scientific method plainly works, as you say, and that’s true. But it works at doing what exactly? Answering that question takes us into philosophical territory, into metaphysics, epistemology, and morality. What exactly is science good at? What is scientific progress? What is empirical truth?

Certainly, philosophical questions are beside the point of science, and scientists may find them pestering, but that’s because the questions are philosophical, not scientific. So, they’re relevant to philosophy, not to science.

The question, then, I think, is whether science is perfectly self-sustaining. It’s not that science needs to answer to philosophy to have legitimacy. The apparent success of science speaks for itself. But understanding what science is doing when it’s “working” and “succeeding” is largely a philosophical matter. We don’t need philosophers necessarily to do science well (although arguably theoretical physics is stuck in a rut). But we need philosophy to understand things at the philosophical level.

Another way to put this is to question pragmatism itself. Lots of critics pushed Richard Rorty on this, and he mastered the art of dodging and deflating philosophical questions, sticking to his pragmatism guns. But it began to look like rhetorical trickery and evasiveness. It was the same with Wittgenstein and the positivists. They thought that philosophical questions are there to be deflated, that those problems were all phony. But that line of argument bordered on mysticism, the point being that you’re supposed to understand where things ultimately stand with some epiphany or direct insight that bypasses the need for philosophical doubts and reasoning.

Maybe it’s just a question of character. Pragmatic personalities only want to get on with their work without worrying about the big picture, whereas philosophical ones are drawn to the big picture, and to understanding things deeply to make sure they’re not being duped. If science works, does that mean there’s no big picture of how or why science works? Or does the workability logically entail the philosophical questions, regardless of whether we’re disposed to address them?

I’ve been wanting to write something recently on scientism, and I think your comment provides a fine way into this issue.