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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. 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 tangible laws of ethics, ecology is always an approximate science, ethically.
(c) Without analysis in ecology, there is little basis for making ethical claims.
(d) By valuing previously unvalued phenomena, ecology develops its own unique ethics.

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) The human race would have to have been obliterated like the dinosaurs.
(c) We would have to know the future of our race.
(d) We would need to know that evolution tended toward increase complexity.

3. What is the difference between primary and secondary emotions?
(a) Primary emotions are conscious, secondary emotions are instinctual.
(b) Primary emotions are inborn, secondary emotions are personal.
(c) Primary emotions are deliberate, secondary emotions are unconscious.
(d) Primary emotions are tied to instincts, secondary emotions are tied to homeostatic regulation.

4. What kind of progress does Wilson see in the history of life on earth?
(a) He sees a punctuated equilibrium.
(b) He sees a tendency toward complexity.
(c) He sees a tendency toward adaptation to environment.
(d) He sees the role of blind chance marring the evolutionary record.

5. The idea that water was the unifying medium for all nature is the center of which philosophical view?
(a) Idealism.
(b) Materialism.
(c) Mysticism.
(d) Science.

6. After considering all the different contexts for ants' communication, how does Wilson describe their form of communication?
(a) As instinctive teamwork.
(b) As electrochemical resonance.
(c) As socially conditioned.
(d) As released pheromones.

7. What does science try to integrate, in Wilson's account?
(a) Systems of explaining phenomena.
(b) The foundations of different sciences.
(c) Elements of systems.
(d) The history of science.

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

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

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

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

12. Who influenced Wilson's idea of unified learning?
(a) Linnaeus.
(b) Darwin.
(c) Lamarck.
(d) Van Buren.

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

14. What does Wilson say was the consequence of Robespierre's employment of the concept of the general will?
(a) The French went to war with Russia.
(b) Napoleon rose to power.
(c) 17,000 Frenchmen were killed.
(d) The French undermined their own revolution.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. How does consilience help us understand organisms?

2. When did the Enlightenment end, in Wilson's account?

3. Where do government policies typically originate, in Wilson's account?

4. How are scientific theories constructed and used within the scientific community, in Wilson's account?

5. What can biological research do for complexity theory, in Wilson's account?

(see the answer keys)

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