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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the problem with sociology, in Edmund Wilson's estimation?
(a) It is founded in statistics.
(b) It is grounded in badly-understood genetic science.
(c) It avoids analysis.
(d) It relies on untrustworthy models for its measurements.

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

3. What beneficial uses can incest have in cultures, in Durham's account?
(a) It produces heroes and giants.
(b) It tests the laws.
(c) It produces scapegoats and criminals.
(d) It provides evidence of aristocracy.

4. How many disorders are caused by genes?
(a) 120,000.
(b) 12,000.
(c) 1,200.
(d) 120.

5. What does status give a man power to do, in Edmund Wilson's account?
(a) Have more offspring.
(b) Have more wives.
(c) Have more influence.
(d) Have more money.

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

7. What does Edmund Wilson say wars are products of?
(a) Resources and demand.
(b) Genes and culture.
(c) Technological imbalances.
(d) Political failures.

8. How does Wilson describe the difference between gifted and less-gifted artists' brains?
(a) Gifted artists use a larger are of their brains.
(b) Less-gifted artists have smaller capacity for empathy.
(c) Gifted artists have a larger language center.
(d) Gifted artists have more connections between brain areas.

9. Where can integrity be attained, according to Wilson?
(a) Through the innate sense of moral reasoning.
(b) Through obedience to religion.
(c) Through acts that feel good and true.
(d) Through submission to tradition.

10. How does the empiricist view ethical reasoning?
(a) As a series of innate contradictions.
(b) As a series or rejections of childish language.
(c) As a series of struggles within the self.
(d) As a series of choices.

11. What does Wilson say about the complexity of the social sciences?
(a) They can be modeled by animal cultures.
(b) They can be eliminated through military science.
(c) They can be unraveled by computers.
(d) They are more complex than physics.

12. What problem does Wilson attribute to failures in the social sciences?
(a) Failure to react to environmental disasters.
(b) Failure to remedy the inequality between the classes.
(c) Failure to foresee the collapse of the welfare state.
(d) Failure to regulate industry.

13. What were the first artistic images of animals intended to evoke, according to Wilson?
(a) Myths.
(b) Real events.
(c) Spirits.
(d) Gods.

14. What is critical to the development of culture, in Edmund Wilson's account?
(a) Genetic complexities.
(b) Linguistic complexities.
(c) Artistic complexities.
(d) Environmental complexities.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. Who does Wilson offer as evidence of thinkers affected by the concept of natural rights?

2. Where does postmodernism fail to accord with science, in Edmund Wilson's account?

3. What role does Wilson ascribe to human nature?

4. What is the social cost of violating the incest taboo?

5. How does Transcendentalism justify war, in Edmund Wilson's account?

(see the answer keys)

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