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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. How many disorders are caused by genes?

2. What does Wilson call sociology?

3. What does natural selection provide for a species?

4. What is the problem with anthropology, in Edmund Wilson's estimation?

5. What were the first artistic images of animals intended to evoke, according to Wilson?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. How does Wilson describe the universality of art?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 are the reasons that the sciences have resisted the urge to unification expressed in consilience? How are the sciences organized like trades, and how have individuals staked claims on funding or authority that would prevent consilience?

Essay Topic 3

How would you respond to a reviewer who wrote that after Wilson leaves his discussion of biology and reductionism, which were his fields of training, he loses authority, and ventures into fields he is not expert in, where his ideas about art and religion are off-base, and his argument about objectivity is tautological. Is this a fair critique?

(see the answer keys)

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