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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through The Enlightenment.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What did the idea of intellectual unity foster in the Enlightenment?
(a) Racial supremacy.
(b) Human rights.
(c) European supremacy.
(d) Diplomacy.

2. How has the postmodern fragmentation of knowledge affected consilience, in Wilson's account??
(a) It has opened new fields.
(b) It has created the conditions for unification.
(c) It has not been useful.
(d) It has generated unprecedented discussions between disciplines.

3. How does Wilson characterize the relationship between ecology and ethics?
(a) By valuing previously unvalued phenomena, ecology develops its own unique ethics.
(b) Without analysis in ecology, there is little basis for making ethical claims.
(c) By studying how people assign values, we find that ecology has always had an ethical scale of value.
(d) Without tangible laws of ethics, ecology is always an approximate science, ethically.

4. What interpret does Wilson give the myth of Icarus?
(a) It represents man's daring.
(b) It represents man's tragic nature.
(c) It represents the benefit of age and wisdom.
(d) It represents the value of learning over freedom.

5. Where does the unification of intellectual work have its benefit, in Wilson's account?
(a) In philosophy.
(b) In environmental policy.
(c) In the future.
(d) In politics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the only way to get a clear picture of the world, in Wilson's account?

2. What philosophical assumption underlay the notion that evolution followed simple laws?

3. Whose ideas influenced the formation of the French slogan "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"?

4. What did Descartes argue for, in Wilson's account?

5. When was Condorcet born?

(see the answer key)

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