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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

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

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

5. How many billion people can the earth sustain, theoretically?
(a) 22.
(b) 16.
(c) 12.
(d) 10.

6. How does Edmund Wilson describe the current era of economics?
(a) As the era of supply and demand.
(b) As the Era of Model Building.
(c) As the era of statistical analysis.
(d) As the era of international debt.

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

8. What does Wilson call sociology?
(a) The study of complex societies.
(b) The study of simple society.
(c) The study of society.
(d) The study of conflict between societies.

9. How much will sea levels theoretically rise if the ice caps melt?
(a) 120 cm.
(b) 30 cm.
(c) 90 cm.
(d) 60 cm.

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

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

12. What causes a change in traits?
(a) Mutation of one gene.
(b) Mutation of several genes, plus an environmental change.
(c) The process of survival that makes a new trait more common.
(d) Environmental changes that make a trait more desirable.

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

14. 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 relies on untrustworthy models for its measurements.
(d) It avoids analysis.

15. What do cultures use from the mind, in Wilson's account?
(a) Narratives.
(b) Myths.
(c) Humanities.
(d) Science.

Short Answer Questions

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

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

3. What does Wilson say about the complexity of the social sciences?

4. What does Edmund Wilson say is the logic behind consilience?

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

(see the answer keys)

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