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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does natural selection provide for a species?
(a) More mating possibilities.
(b) New genetic combinations.
(c) More diverse genetic options.
(d) Fewer dominant individuals.

2. What causes economic theories to fail, in Edmund Wilson's estimation?
(a) Aloofness from the social environment.
(b) Lack of integration with psychology.
(c) Reliance on statistical analysis instead of creative synthesis.
(d) Lack of integration with religion.

3. What does Edmund Wilson say is the logic behind consilience?
(a) Interpretation of art by science.
(b) Interdependence of art and humanities.
(c) Generation of science by art.
(d) Mutual interpretation of arts and sciences.

4. How do widely distributed cultural traits affect genes?
(a) They limit the expression of genes responsible for less-widely distributed cultural traits.
(b) They prevent the spread of other cultural traits and other genes.
(c) They bolster the genes that predispose them.
(d) They allow the genes that predispose them to evolve.

5. What are epigenetic rules?
(a) Influences that affect the expression of genes.
(b) The cultural effect on genetic expression.
(c) The language in which culture expresses itself.
(d) The process of selecting which genes are most desirable in an environment.

6. What does Edmund Wilson say cultures are made of?
(a) Linked compositions of myths and symbols.
(b) The highest expressions of symbolic language in art.
(c) Genetic pools.
(d) Groups of language users.

7. What do the arts need science for?
(a) To demonstrate the truth of artistic visions.
(b) To fulfill artistic prophecies.
(c) To test artistic theories.
(d) To stimulate interpretation.

8. Where do science and the arts both originate, according to Wilson?
(a) In the genes.
(b) In religion.
(c) In the imagination.
(d) In language.

9. How does Edmund Wilson define ethics?
(a) As a code of principles.
(b) As a set of unspoken prohibitions.
(c) As a series of taboos.
(d) As a set of universal laws.

10. What does Wilson offer as evidence of cross-cultural epi-genetic rules?
(a) Councils.
(b) Mating rituals.
(c) Myths.
(d) Regional cuisine.

11. How does Transcendentalism validate ethics?
(a) It ascribes natural law to God's will.
(b) It describes the individual as the source of all morality.
(c) It locates the moral reasoning in God, which is to say in everything.
(d) It treats the conscience as evidence of innate morality.

12. Who does Wilson offer as evidence of thinkers affected by the concept of natural rights?
(a) Robespierre.
(b) Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
(c) Thomas Jefferson.
(d) Benjamin Franklin.

13. How do hereditarians see the evolution of culture?
(a) As a change in brain chemistry.
(b) As the result of nature.
(c) As an emergence of the world spirit.
(d) As the result of environmental factors.

14. What did economists do during the Marginalist Era in economics?
(a) They examined social behaviors as individual activities.
(b) They used science to analyze motives and trends in the mass.
(c) They described production as the result of supply and demand.
(d) They used statistics to model mass behaviors.

15. Which ocean is still experiencing increasing yields?
(a) Pacific Ocean.
(b) Indian Ocean.
(c) Atlantic Ocean.
(d) Southern Ocean.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where can integrity be attained, according to Wilson?

2. What is the problem with anthropology, in Edmund Wilson's estimation?

3. What evolution creates culture?

4. What is gene-culture evolution?

5. What is the traditional view of art?

(see the answer keys)

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