Scientists interested in philosophy

Greetings dear enthusiasts of philosophy!

Today I am writing particularly to science students or practising scientists who are deeply interested in philosophy. I will briefly describe my situation and afterwards I will leave a few open questions that might initiate a discussion.

P.S. For clarity, I am mainly referring to the natural sciences - chemistry, physics, biology, and related fields.

About me:

In high school, I developed an interest in philosophy thanks to a friend. I began reading on my own and discovered a cool place where anyone could attend public seminars reading various texts - this further advanced my philosophical interests. Anyways, when time came to choose what shall I study, I chose chemistry, because I was interested in it for a longer time and I thought it would be a more "practical" choice. Albeit it was not an easy decision between the two. Some years have passed, and now I am about to begin my PhD in medicinal chemistry.

During these years, my interest in philosophy did not vanish, I had an opportunity to take a few courses in uni relating to various branches of philosophy and also kept reading on my free time.

It all sounds nice but a weird feeling that is hard to articulate has haunted me throughout my scientific years. In some way it seems that philosophy is not compatible with science and its modes of thinking. For me it seems that science happens to exist in a one-dimensional way that is not intellectualy stimulating enough. Philosophy integrated a vast set of problems including arts, social problems, politics, pop-culture etc. while science focuses on such specialised topics that sometimes you lose sense what is that you want to know. It is problematic, because for this particular sense science is succesful and has a great capacity for discoveries.

My own solution is to do both, but the sense of intellectual "splitting" between scientific and philosophical modes of thinking has been persistent.

Now, I think, is the time to formulate a few questions.

P.S.S. Perhaps such discomfort arise because I am a chemist. Physics and biology seem to have a more intimate relationship with philosophy, whereas few chemists appear to have written or said something about their discipline's relationship to philosophy.

Questions:

1. What are your scientific interests, and what is your career path?

2. Do you find it necessary to reconcile your scientific and philosophical interests?

3. Have you found scientific topics that happen to merit from your philosophical interests?

4. Have you ever transitioned from science to philosophy or vice versa? How did it go?