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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through The Fitness of Human Nature.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does temporal-lobe epilepsy cause?
(a) Narcolepsy.
(b) Catatonia.
(c) Tourette's syndrome.
(d) Hyper-religiosity.

2. What is consilience?
(a) An agreed approach to different subjects.
(b) A proposal for reorganizing departments of knowledge.
(c) An underlying pattern that tends toward unification.
(d) A historical basis for unifying fields of study.

3. What benefit does Wilson say consilience has?
(a) It describes the humanities in scientific terms.
(b) It translates science into humanities and vice versa.
(c) It provides a Rosetta Stone for the sciences.
(d) It allows facts and theories to be tested.

4. How would you describe the relationship between Descartes' theories and modern science of the brain?
(a) Descartes' dualism has been rejected.
(b) Modern science has centered on the role of doubt in awareness.
(c) The molecular work on the brain has completely surpassed anything Descartes theorized.
(d) Descartes sense of consciousness' abstraction has been embraced by scientists who practice consilience.

5. What does Wilson use the discussion of the unity of species to prepare for?
(a) A discussion of the equality of genders.
(b) A discussion of the inevitability of progress.
(c) A discussion of the conscience and society.
(d) A discussion of the unity of sciences.

Short Answer Questions

1. What problem does Wilson identify in Freud's research on dreams?

2. How do hereditarians see the evolution of culture?

3. What do the natural science stimulate, in Wilson's account?

4. What does Edmund Wilson credit human nature with altering?

5. How does consilience work?

(see the answer key)

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