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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What field does culture need to be linked with, in order to be explained, according to Wilson?
(a) Economics.
(b) Natural sciences.
(c) Religion.
(d) Language.

2. Where does Edmund Wilson say consilience is beneficial?
(a) In humanities and natural sciences.
(b) In history and technology.
(c) In biology and ethics.
(d) In all areas of learning.

3. What is gene-culture evolution?
(a) Development of individuals and races within evolving cultures.
(b) Evolution of the genes that change a species' culture.
(c) Enrichment of the environment within which genes are altered.
(d) Changes in human culture that are driven by genetic changes.

4. What does natural consilience connect?
(a) Heredity and culture.
(b) Time and change.
(c) Language and genetics.
(d) Language and culture.

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

6. Where does postmodernism fail to accord with science, in Edmund Wilson's account?
(a) In rooting creativity in social behavior.
(b) In describing the arts as strictly cultural.
(c) In refusing to accept statistical modeling of individual behavior.
(d) In describing the brain as chaotic.

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

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

9. Where do tangible phenomena evolve, according to consilience?
(a) In material processes.
(b) In language.
(c) In natural laws.
(d) In myth.

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

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

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

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

14. How many children per parent would families need to have for the world's population to reach 12.5 billion by 2050?
(a) 2.4.
(b) 2.2.
(c) 2.1.
(d) 2.0.

15. Which social science does Edmund Wilson say is best situated to bridge the gap between natural science and social science?
(a) Political science.
(b) Sociology.
(c) Anthropology.
(d) Economics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How many disorders are caused by genes?

2. What beneficial uses can incest have in cultures, in Durham's account?

3. What are social scientists lacking, according to Wilson?

4. What evolution creates culture?

5. How do nurturists see the evolution of culture?

(see the answer keys)

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