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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Ariadne's Thread.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How did Locke distinguish between culture and history?
(a) Culture was built forward, history was built backward.
(b) Culture followed laws, history evolved.
(c) Culture fostered the passions, history fostered reason.
(d) Culture was chaotic, history was self-organizing.

2. How does consilience work?
(a) By providing different models for the same behavior.
(b) By providing a context and a practical consequence to each scientific study.
(c) By breaking things down and putting them back together.
(d) By making science relevant to the humanities.

3. What does Wilson say evidence from the natural sciences says about Enlightenment thinkers?
(a) They made correct assumptions about the evolution of species.
(b) They made correct assumptions about the material world.
(c) They made correct assumptions about the nature of divinity.
(d) They made correct assumptions about the presence of dinosaurs.

4. Why does Wilson take up the example of dreams?
(a) To show that Freud discovered things he didn't understand himself.
(b) To demonstrate man's different ways of knowing.
(c) To show that Freud's unscientific methods make his assumptions wrong.
(d) To demonstrate the correct way to analyze brain chemicals.

5. After considering all the different contexts for ants' communication, how does Wilson describe their form of communication?
(a) As instinctive teamwork.
(b) As socially conditioned.
(c) As released pheromones.
(d) As electrochemical resonance.

Short Answer Questions

1. What do the laws of physics transcend, in Wilson's account?

2. What does Wilson say he was searching for as a young man?

3. Where does Wilson propose to test the benefit of consilience?

4. What qualities of mind drove the techno-scientific age?

5. How does Wilson characterize the modern definition of dreams?

(see the answer key)

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