View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Edmund Wilson say the arts ultimately create?
(a) Consilience.
(b) Science.
(c) Religion.
(d) Rituals and consistency.

2. What is kin selection?
(a) The process by which parents decide which child to favor.
(b) The survival strategy by which people care most deeply for their kin.
(c) The strategy by which a family gives itself the best chance of expanding.
(d) The process by which people choose mates.

3. What were ethics constructed around, according to Wilson?
(a) The notion that the gods observe human actions.
(b) The notion that human acts have consequences.
(c) The notion that human beings can be perfected.
(d) The notion that justice is independent.

4. What field does culture need to be linked with, in order to be explained, according to Wilson?
(a) Language.
(b) Economics.
(c) Natural sciences.
(d) Religion.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Wilson describe the difference between gifted and less-gifted artists' brains?

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

3. What do the arts need science for?

4. What does status give a man power to do, in Edmund Wilson's account?

5. How many billion people live in absolute poverty, at the time of Wilson's writing?

Short Essay Questions

1. What are the two branches of anthropology Wilson describes, and what question does he say they both fail to answer?

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

3. How do patterns in mental development connect genes to culture?

4. What does Wilson say the liberal arts should address?

5. How does postmodern art resist consilience, in E.O. Wilson's account?

6. In what way are epi-genetic rules cross-cultural?

7. What is the purpose of the social sciences, and how does Wilson distinguish the social sciences from the physical social sciences?

8. What role does Wilson say creativity has in survival and evolution?

9. What is the sign, in EO Wilson's account, that culture is evolving?

10. What does Wilson say is the relationship between human genetics and the development of culture?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 769 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample