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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. What idea of Locke's survived the Enlightenment into Romanticism?
(a) The idea of transcendent experiences.
(b) The idea mystical states.
(c) The idea of natural rights.
(d) The idea of inevitable progress.

3. How did Locke distinguish between culture and history?
(a) Culture was built forward, history was built backward.
(b) Culture was chaotic, history was self-organizing.
(c) Culture fostered the passions, history fostered reason.
(d) Culture followed laws, history evolved.

4. What does Wilson call the discrete pieces of evidence?
(a) Nitty gritty facts.
(b) Researching molecules.
(c) The raw materials.
(d) Atomic evidence.

5. What do nerve cells in the brain send signals along?
(a) Axons.
(b) Synapses.
(c) Neurons.
(d) Neutrons.

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

7. How does Wilson characterize the current state of knowledge?
(a) Irreconcilable.
(b) Unified.
(c) Interconnected.
(d) Fragmented.

8. What was Wilson's relationship with the term 'Consilience'?
(a) He coined it.
(b) It came to him in a dream.
(c) He discovered it in his research.
(d) He revitalized it.

9. How does Wilson characterize the modern definition of dreams?
(a) Mystic connections to real events outside the body.
(b) Visions charged by emotion and reorganized by information in memory.
(c) Reconstitution of daily experiences in surreal visions.
(d) Psychic returns to the scenes of primal injuries.

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

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

12. What does Wilson mean by the Ionian Enchantment'?
(a) Belief in the multiplicity of forms.
(b) Belief in a historical process.
(c) Belief in the unity of species.
(d) Belief in a transcendent spirit.

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

14. Who proposed the idea of unity of species that follow a few simple laws?
(a) Solon.
(b) Socrates.
(c) Thales of Miletus.
(d) Plato.

15. What does Wilson say matters in science?
(a) Final results.
(b) Paradigm shifts.
(c) Hypothesis.
(d) Publications.

Short Answer Questions

1. How many genes does the brain consist of?

2. What is consilience?

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

4. Who influenced Wilson's idea of unified learning?

5. How has the postmodern fragmentation of knowledge affected consilience, in Wilson's account??

(see the answer keys)

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