Neil Before Philosophy

Why do we keep Snell’s law on the books when we both know it to be false and have a more accurate refinement available? There are obvious pedagogic reasons. But are there serious scientific ones? I think there are, and these reasons have to do with the task of explaining. Specifying which factors are explanatorily relevant to which others is a job done by science over and above the job of laying out the laws of nature. Once the laws of nature are known, we still have to decide what kinds of factors can be cited in explanation.

–Nancy Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics Lie

Tell me again, Neil deGrasse Tyson, how philosophy is irrelevant and useless?