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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through The Arts and their Interpretation.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What field does Wilson say philosophers and scientists should collaborate in?
(a) Urban planning.
(b) Conflict resolution.
(c) International relations.
(d) Biology and social sciences.

2. Where do the images of snakes in dreams likely come from, in Wilson's account?
(a) The intuition of subterranean experience.
(b) A widespread fear of snakes.
(c) The Bible story of the garden of Eden.
(d) The mystic significance of snakes.

3. Why does Wilson say that the concept of evolutionary progress is not easily defined?
(a) Because evolution does not have a goal.
(b) Because it is impossible to predict what conditions will be, and how they will require adaptation.
(c) Because the historical record is unclear, and because the present moment is still chaotic.
(d) Because the goal of evolution is clear to individuals but not to the race as a whole.

4. What causes a change in traits?
(a) The process of survival that makes a new trait more common.
(b) Mutation of one gene.
(c) Environmental changes that make a trait more desirable.
(d) Mutation of several genes, plus an environmental change.

5. What political movement did Condorcet inspire?
(a) The French Revolution.
(b) The abolition of slavery in French colonies.
(c) The abolition of slavery in the New World.
(d) The American Revolution.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Edmund Wilson say is the logic behind consilience?

2. How do Gnostics and alchemists view snakes?

3. Wilson says that biological classification is based on the "Origin of Species" and what?

4. Where does the unification of intellectual work have its benefit, in Wilson's account?

5. What was it about armies that Wilson was struck by?

(see the answer key)

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