My Thoughts On The Grand Design - Part 1

So I'm reading The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. From what I've read and heard about it, this book may be offensive to a lot of people. For instance, on page 5 (the first page of the book with text on it), the authors declare that "...philosophy is dead." Science, they say, has taken on the role in this century that philosophy has played in the past, giving us a perspective on what we are, who we are, and where we've come from, along with where we're headed. And that's probably the least controversial of their statements, if the press is to be believed.