I was asking myself two questions this morning: is philosophy best seen as a rudimentary form of modern fields such as science, public policy, and artistic modes, or of no use any longer, despite lingering culturally and professionally? or is it rather seen as perhaps a perpetually useful field, like a perpetual spring, that has so far birthed science and art modes and policy and in due course may birth more, and without it science and art modes and policy alone may plateu? 

An observation of the history of physics, for example, and arguably in other fields too, suggests the latter possibility. 

Philosophy perhaps functions more like a TV show writer in the sense that he may, based on circumstance, choose to produce a show, and once the premise is set, the subsequent episodes and seasons are taken over by the specialized fields, but without the TV show writer, we may not have new shows.

But academic philosophy? I’m not so sure. Even though philosophy is useful, I feel like most philosophy comes from practitioners of an active, more productive field, not from passive, observational philosophy, as many academic philosophers feel today. In physics, most productive philosophies seem to have come from active physicists; yes, Kuhn made an observation, and so did Popper, but those are observations, not active decisions that a physicist makes; in that sense, the philosophies of Newton, Einstein, Bohr, and even Wheeler seem more useful. I think the same also applies to the arts. To also ethics, etc. (for ethics, many useful ethical frameworks seem to have come from active practitioners of religion, for example).

So if one wants to be a philosopher, they must probably first engage actively with a craft about which they wants to philosophize, rather than make comments about what other people do. Want to philosophize about physics? great! Become a physicist first.