I can't speak for Grosseteste, who lived in an environment where coming out as a physicalist was pretty much suicide, but coming up with something like "resolution and composition" must come from the trust that similar things behave similarly. Combined with the fact that observations of similarity are based on observations of physical properties, it must have crossed his mind at some point that there may be nothing more than just the physical, since all else is irrelevant when trying to formulate the single set of natural laws which govern the universe.
I think you're looking at the difference between a hard science (like physics! Now there's a science based on physicalism!), based on measurement, and a soft science, based on opinion polls (like psychology, sociology, and even theology), but both can fit into the scientific method.
Barely. Again, to call opinion polls valid measurements for the scientific method, you must agree that similar things behave similarly: you only need to choose the right boundaries for your black box (i.e. a good idea of what this 'similar' means) to analyze and predict someone's behaviour. That goes against the notion that there must always be something inside the black box (a consciousness, a soul, whatever) that doesn't obey a natural, universal law, which is AFAIK something you need to refute physicalism.
It might seem that way until you realize that (proper) science must eventually be based on physicalism. Unless you accept the notion that the world can be fully understood by observing its physical properties (the question "what is a physical property?" is of course an important one), you'll have to reject science as an ultimately pointless endeavour. You can't trust the foundations of science, and thus science itself, if you believe there is "more" than what can be measured. Specifically, if you believe in divine beings, you must logically reject the scientific method.
The Foldscope design accommodates different optical
configurations, including spherical ball lenses, spherical micro-lens doublets (such as a
Wollaston doublet), and more complex assemblies of aspheric micro-lenses.
So W^X is still not necessarily a problem. I interpreted ThisIsNotAName's post as "requiring execheap rather than execmod smells like Bad Things(TM)," which is true: it says something about a project in general when you need to be able to violate W^X (execheap), rather than explicitly switching between W and X (execmod). Whether you'll be granted execmod or not is really a separate problem.
Can you explain how W^X is the problem here? As far as I can understand it, JIT compilation and dynamic recompilation should work fine with W^X enabled, as long as the process has the execmod permission.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess I just have to read some more ;)
Except the scientific method was invented by Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, who was certainly not a physicalist.
I can't speak for Grosseteste, who lived in an environment where coming out as a physicalist was pretty much suicide, but coming up with something like "resolution and composition" must come from the trust that similar things behave similarly. Combined with the fact that observations of similarity are based on observations of physical properties, it must have crossed his mind at some point that there may be nothing more than just the physical, since all else is irrelevant when trying to formulate the single set of natural laws which govern the universe.
I think you're looking at the difference between a hard science (like physics! Now there's a science based on physicalism!), based on measurement, and a soft science, based on opinion polls (like psychology, sociology, and even theology), but both can fit into the scientific method.
Barely. Again, to call opinion polls valid measurements for the scientific method, you must agree that similar things behave similarly: you only need to choose the right boundaries for your black box (i.e. a good idea of what this 'similar' means) to analyze and predict someone's behaviour. That goes against the notion that there must always be something inside the black box (a consciousness, a soul, whatever) that doesn't obey a natural, universal law, which is AFAIK something you need to refute physicalism.
It might seem that way until you realize that (proper) science must eventually be based on physicalism. Unless you accept the notion that the world can be fully understood by observing its physical properties (the question "what is a physical property?" is of course an important one), you'll have to reject science as an ultimately pointless endeavour. You can't trust the foundations of science, and thus science itself, if you believe there is "more" than what can be measured. Specifically, if you believe in divine beings, you must logically reject the scientific method.
So W^X is still not necessarily a problem. I interpreted ThisIsNotAName's post as "requiring execheap rather than execmod smells like Bad Things(TM)," which is true: it says something about a project in general when you need to be able to violate W^X (execheap), rather than explicitly switching between W and X (execmod). Whether you'll be granted execmod or not is really a separate problem.
Can you explain how W^X is the problem here? As far as I can understand it, JIT compilation and dynamic recompilation should work fine with W^X enabled, as long as the process has the execmod permission.