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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does natural consilience connect?
(a) Language and culture.
(b) Language and genetics.
(c) Time and change.
(d) Heredity and culture.

2. Where do tangible phenomena evolve, according to consilience?
(a) In material processes.
(b) In myth.
(c) In language.
(d) In natural laws.

3. What causes a change in traits?
(a) Environmental changes that make a trait more desirable.
(b) Mutation of one gene.
(c) The process of survival that makes a new trait more common.
(d) Mutation of several genes, plus an environmental change.

4. What is the weakness of the current era of economics, in Edmund Wilson's account?
(a) It is grounded in untenable assumptions.
(b) It cannot predict all human behaviors.
(c) It is too focused on the micro-analysis.
(d) It relies on too few variables.

5. What does Edmund Wilson say is the logic behind consilience?
(a) Mutual interpretation of arts and sciences.
(b) Interdependence of art and humanities.
(c) Interpretation of art by science.
(d) Generation of science by art.

Short Answer Questions

1. How many billion people can the earth sustain, theoretically?

2. How, in Edmund Wilson's account, was moral reasoning affected by natural science?

3. What does Edmund Wilson credit human nature with altering?

4. What are epigenetic rules?

5. Which social science does Edmund Wilson say is best situated to bridge the gap between natural science and social science?

Short Essay Questions

1. What ethical perspective does Wilson call the empiricist view?

2. How do social factors influence genetic distribution?

3. What social problems does Wilson say are caused by failures in social sciences?

4. What social science does Wilson credit with coming closest to consilience?

5. What is volitional evolution, and what does Wilson say are its effects?

6. What is the difference between nurturists and hereditarians in describing how culture evolves?

7. What is the fundamental assumption behind consilience?

8. How do the senses function as epi-genetic rules?

9. What is the consilient view of religious ethics?

10. What role does the incest taboo have in genetic and cultural development?

(see the answer keys)

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