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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

3. What does the concept of God do, in Edmund Wilson's account?
(a) Open the mind to what is beyond it.
(b) Ground the mind in its source.
(c) Clarify man's relationship with things whose origins are inexplicable.
(d) Unify the sciences and humanities.

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

5. Which ocean is still experiencing increasing yields?
(a) Indian Ocean.
(b) Atlantic Ocean.
(c) Pacific Ocean.
(d) Southern Ocean.

6. 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 clarified the location of the moral sense.
(d) Natural laws helped establish social laws.

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

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

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

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

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

12. How does postmodern influence portray existence?
(a) As individual.
(b) As interdependent.
(c) As chaotic.
(d) As communal.

13. Wilson defines culture in terms of what?
(a) Environment.
(b) Religion.
(c) Language.
(d) Genes.

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

15. How does Transcendentalism validate ethics?
(a) It ascribes natural law to God's will.
(b) It treats the conscience as evidence of innate morality.
(c) It describes the individual as the source of all morality.
(d) It locates the moral reasoning in God, which is to say in everything.

Short Answer Questions

1. What consequence does Wilson describe to technological advancement?

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

3. What is the traditional view of art?

4. What will the combination of the arts and sciences ultimately create?

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

(see the answer keys)

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