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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. What do the arts do that makes them different from the sciences, in Edmund Wilson's account?

2. What does Edmund Wilson say the arts ultimately create?

3. How do hereditarians see the evolution of culture?

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

5. What do modern technologies give humans the ability to choose?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the consilient view of religious ethics?

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

3. What is the fundamental assumption behind consilience?

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

5. How does art look through the gene-culture evolution paradigm Wilson offers?

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

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

8. How do social factors influence genetic distribution?

9. What ethical perspective does Wilson call the Transcendental view?

10. Where does ethics come from, in E.O. Wilson's account?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Wilson writes that economic models of culture can change variables, but keep the remainder--the unique thing that is the culture itself--constant. What is it about economic that Wilson says makes it better suited to our times than sociology and anthropology? What would superiority mean if Wilson were the dean of a university, with power to determine funding for departments?

Essay Topic 2

What would consilience look like if it were accomplished? Would it expand or limit scientific experimentation? Would it encourage or suppress dissenting views? Would it be totalitarian or fractious?

Essay Topic 3

How does the knowledge that EO Wilson lost sight in one eye in childhood and lost a substantial degree of his sense of hearing in adolescence affect his idea of consilience? How would you relate the physical challenges with the intellectual rigor of the scientist, and the vision of the social theorist?

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