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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does local positivism fail to distinguish between, in Wilson's narration?
(a) Concept and fact.
(b) Material and ideal.
(c) Past and future.
(d) Natural science and social science.

2. What did Condorcet pioneer?
(a) The application of statistics to politics.
(b) The application of math in social science.
(c) The notion of innate human rights.
(d) The development of statistical models for economics.

3. What is the only way to get a clear picture of the world, in Wilson's account?
(a) To divorce the natural science from social sciences.
(b) To integrate natural science with social sciences and humanities.
(c) To separate humanities from natural science.
(d) To add philosophy and ethics to all natural sciences.

4. When was complexity theory formed?
(a) The 1920s.
(b) The 1890s.
(c) The 1950s.
(d) The 1970s.

5. That scientific tools does Wilson credit with driving the age of scientific expansion?
(a) Optics, and the ability to measure.
(b) Hydraulics, and the ability to transfer power.
(c) Vaccines, and the ability to heal.
(d) Generators, and the ability to create power.

6. What subject would Wilson like to see more of in undergraduate education?
(a) Sciences.
(b) Arts.
(c) Humanities.
(d) Philosophy.

7. What is the relationship between politicians and intellectuals, in Wilson's account?
(a) They obfuscate each other's work.
(b) They misinterpret each other's work.
(c) They are not related.
(d) They have a mutually supportive role.

8. What do the laws of physics transcend, in Wilson's account?
(a) Cultures.
(b) Mythologies.
(c) Galaxies.
(d) Languages.

9. What was it about armies that Wilson was struck by?
(a) How they were close brotherhoods.
(b) How they were subsidized by communities or nations.
(c) How they were supported by an entire society.
(d) How they were organized.

10. How does consilience help us understand organisms?
(a) By seeing their evolution.
(b) By examining their organization.
(c) By reconstructing them from cells.
(d) By examining their environment.

11. What are the nerve cells in the brain called?
(a) Axons.
(b) Dendrites.
(c) Protons.
(d) Neurons.

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

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

14. Under what circumstances are theories accepted universally?
(a) When evidence is supported by interlocking theories.
(b) When experimental data can be confirmed.
(c) When a theory promises to explain phenomena.
(d) When a hypothesis explains phenomena.

15. How can scientists monitor the working brain, in Wilson's account?
(a) In behavior.
(b) In snapshots.
(c) In real-time analysis.
(d) In limited experiments.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is reductionism?

2. What methods did Descartes use in his work?

3. What does science seek, in Wilson's account?

4. What did Enlightenment thinkers tried to link, in Wilson's account?

5. Wilson says that passion and emotion are both linked to what?

(see the answer keys)

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