Modern theoretical physics is difficult to understand for anyone outside the subject. Can philosophers really contribute to the project of reconciling general relativity and quantum field theory? Or is this a technical business best left to the experts? I would argue for the former. General relativity and quantum field theory are based on some profound insights about the nature of reality. These insights are crystallized in the form of mathematics, but there is a limit on how much progress we can make by just playing around with this mathematics. We need to go back to the insights behind general relativity and quantum field theory, learn to hold them together in our minds, and dare to imagine a world more strange, more beautiful, but ultimately more reasonable than our current theories of it. For this daunting task, philosophical reflection is bound to be of help.