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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

3. What statistic shows the strength of the transcendental view, in Edmund Wilson's account?
(a) 90% of Americans believe in God.
(b) 35% of Americans are freethinking atheists.
(c) 40% of Americans believe in original sin.
(d) 60% of Americans believe that man is a god in ruins.

4. What is the danger of volitional evolution, in Edmund Wilson's account?
(a) Populations can be eradicated.
(b) People can become less human.
(c) Pandemics can be created.
(d) Sea levels can rise.

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

6. What do modern technologies give humans the ability to choose?
(a) The shape of their children's heads.
(b) The color of children's skin.
(c) The genetic superiority of a race.
(d) The direction of human evolution.

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

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

9. What is the traditional view of art?
(a) That it evolved with the brain's genes.
(b) That it developed when language developed.
(c) That it has no end or purpose except in itself.
(d) That it is the latest biological development.

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

11. What does Edmund Wilson credit human nature with altering?
(a) The environment.
(b) Language.
(c) Epigenetic rules.
(d) Technological influences.

12. What explanation does Wilson offer for incest taboos?
(a) Incest predisposes cultures to avoid war.
(b) Incest relationships create genetic defects.
(c) Incest creates unrest in a culture.
(d) Incest undermines primogeniture.

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What do the arts do that makes them different from the sciences, in Edmund Wilson's account?

2. Wilson defines culture in terms of what?

3. What were ethics constructed around, according to Wilson?

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

5. What cannot be expressed by brain imaging, in Edmund Wilson's account?

(see the answer keys)

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