Yes, many people would say, that the task of philosophy is to grasp the reality. But what is the way a philosopher can grasp the reality? Many people don't like the speculative side of things and they prefer the results of science. And science, at least in it's core, is not speculative (of course, string theory is a counter-example, but highly debatable).
But as we have here showed that a) we can be speculative and b) we can be empirical, we should also remember that this is not all there is. I think, that we can analyze concepts without being speculative. And by analyzing concepts, we can understand things better (for example, the results of science). This is a very good way of graspibg the reality, because it makes the quality of our information, our beliefs, better. But this work, I think, mostly belongs to philosophy.