View a FREE sample

This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Where did Wilson develop the idea of unified learning?
(a) During his childhood.
(b) During his science studies.
(c) In his research on ants.
(d) In his writings on religion.

2. What would need to be true before we could establish the goals and progress of evolutionary processes, in Wilson's account?
(a) We would have to have tools that would let us predict how random acts would play out.
(b) We would have to know the future of our race.
(c) We would need to know that evolution tended toward increase complexity.
(d) The human race would have to have been obliterated like the dinosaurs.

3. What does science seek, in Wilson's account?
(a) Interesting hypotheses.
(b) The mind of God.
(c) Objective truth based on hypothesis.
(d) Probably hypothesis.

4. What effect does Wilson say evolution had?
(a) It changed the classification of animals.
(b) It changed the social order among men.
(c) It ended the importance of religion.
(d) It revealed the mechanism of God's working.

5. What decision was effectively made in human evolution as the brain found its present size?
(a) Curiosity over security.
(b) Intelligence over strength.
(c) Dreams over experiences.
(d) Excess over efficiency.

6. What does Wilson credit animals with being able to see?
(a) The present moment.
(b) The causes beneath their actions.
(c) The world beyond the spectrum of our vision.
(d) The urgency of nature.

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

8. What does science use as proof of a theory?
(a) Natural laws.
(b) Repeated experiments.
(c) Hypotheses.
(d) Phenomena witnessed by neutral observers.

9. What did Descartes argue for, in Wilson's account?
(a) The integration of historical will and individual will.
(b) The separation of mind and matter.
(c) Universal peace.
(d) The unification knowledge.

10. What field of questions does Wilson say remain unanswered?
(a) Questions about the nature of matter.
(b) Questions about the effect of environment on individuals.
(c) Questions about things beyond our auditory range.
(d) Questions about the mind's capabilities.

11. Why have scientific models of the brain failed to explain consciousness?
(a) Because living and reproducing do not require self-understanding.
(b) Because scientists are limited in the experiments they can perform on human beings.
(c) Because consciousness is always shifting and cannot be modeled.
(d) Because models of brain activity do not replicate the sense of 'being there' inside the brain.

12. Where does Wilson propose to test the benefit of consilience?
(a) In religion.
(b) In the history of knowledge.
(c) In social sciences and humanities.
(d) In epistemology.

13. What did Freud focus on, in his investigation of dreams?
(a) The role of the unconscious.
(b) The role of the self's desire for power.
(c) The role of original traumas.
(d) The role of infant sexual experience.

14. What does Wilson say that humans are incapable of seeing?
(a) The world in its true state.
(b) Change over time.
(c) The state of grace.
(d) The history of things.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. That scientific tools does Wilson credit with driving the age of scientific expansion?

2. What does Wilson say matters in science?

3. What does local positivism fail to distinguish between, in Wilson's narration?

4. What does Wilson use the discussion of the unity of species to prepare for?

5. How does Wilson characterize the current state of knowledge?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 642 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample