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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the weakness of the current era of economics, in Edmund Wilson's account?
(a) It is grounded in untenable assumptions.
(b) It cannot predict all human behaviors.
(c) It relies on too few variables.
(d) It is too focused on the micro-analysis.

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

3. 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) Economics.
(d) Anthropology.

4. How, in Edmund Wilson's account, was moral reasoning affected by natural science?
(a) Natural laws dispelled taboos.
(b) Natural law created natural rights.
(c) Natural laws helped establish social laws.
(d) Natural laws clarified the location of the moral sense.

5. 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 used statistics to model mass behaviors.
(d) They described production as the result of supply and demand.

6. What are social scientists lacking, according to Wilson?
(a) Purpose and drive.
(b) Relationships with the humanities.
(c) Funding.
(d) Unity and vision.

7. How does Transcendentalism justify war, in Edmund Wilson's account?
(a) Each side describes their cause as sacred.
(b) Each side relies on unifying logic.
(c) Each side poses as protecting an individual's rights.
(d) Each side refers to nature for their authority to fight.

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

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

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

11. What are effective ethical codes based on?
(a) Inherited custom.
(b) Objective knowledge.
(c) Scientific laws.
(d) Religion.

12. What role does Wilson ascribe to human nature?
(a) Connecting genes to nature.
(b) Changing how language expresses genetics.
(c) Changing what genetic expressions mean.
(d) Changing how genes create environments.

13. How many billion people live in absolute poverty, at the time of Wilson's writing?
(a) One half.
(b) One.
(c) Two.
(d) One and a half.

14. What consequence does Wilson describe to technological advancement?
(a) Environmental damage.
(b) Economic inequality.
(c) Racial discrimination.
(d) Unprecedented access to knowledge.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What are epigenetic rules?

2. What does Wilson call sociology?

3. What is kin selection?

4. Why does Edmund Wilson say that human existence in the future will depend on ethics?

5. What causes a change in traits?

(see the answer keys)

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