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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where do tangible phenomena evolve, according to consilience?

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

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

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

5. What is critical to the development of culture, in Edmund Wilson's account?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. How does Wilson describe the universality of art?

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

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

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

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

9. How do social factors influence genetic distribution?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Are 'epi-genetic rules' really just another way of saying complex social factors that have to be experienced individually? Does Wilson really evade the complexity and individuality of experience and sensation and language use?

Essay Topic 2

What difference is there between how individuals experience consilience and how societies experience consilience? Is the best audience for 'Consilience' really a society, or are there uses for consilience in individual lives? Who do you have to be to 'use' consilience? Who is Wilson's audience?

Essay Topic 3

How does Wilson refute claims by philosophers of individual experience, who say that truth is personal, and that the search for unity of knowledge will always result in self-opposition, as Freud shows is the case in the unconscious? Does Wilson seem to be at war with himself anywhere within the book, or are his ideas consistent with the possibility of unification of knowledge?

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