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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What were ethics constructed around, according to Wilson?
(a) The notion that human beings can be perfected.
(b) The notion that human acts have consequences.
(c) The notion that the gods observe human actions.
(d) The notion that justice is independent.

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

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

4. Why does Edmund Wilson say that human existence in the future will depend on ethics?
(a) Because people will only work together once they can frame the problems.
(b) Because the alternative to self-extinction is preserving the others around the self.
(c) Because empathy will prevent exploitation.
(d) Because evolution favors contract formation.

5. What were the first artistic images of animals intended to evoke, according to Wilson?
(a) Gods.
(b) Spirits.
(c) Real events.
(d) Myths.

6. How do hereditarians see the evolution of culture?
(a) As an emergence of the world spirit.
(b) As the result of nature.
(c) As a change in brain chemistry.
(d) As the result of environmental factors.

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

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

9. What cannot be expressed by brain imaging, in Edmund Wilson's account?
(a) The locus of artistic appreciation.
(b) The genetic predisposition toward artistic work.
(c) Reactions to art.
(d) Traits responsible for art.

10. What will the combination of the arts and sciences ultimately create?
(a) The revelation of the source of creativity.
(b) The evolution of the brain.
(c) Transcendence.
(d) The genetic source of imagination.

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

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

13. What beneficial uses can incest have in cultures, in Durham's account?
(a) It produces heroes and giants.
(b) It provides evidence of aristocracy.
(c) It produces scapegoats and criminals.
(d) It tests the laws.

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

15. What is the problem with sociology, in Edmund Wilson's estimation?
(a) It is grounded in badly-understood genetic science.
(b) It avoids analysis.
(c) It is founded in statistics.
(d) It relies on untrustworthy models for its measurements.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Wilson call sociology?

2. What did all Enlightenment thinkers have in common, according to Wilson?

3. How do nurturists see the evolution of culture?

4. Where can integrity be attained, according to Wilson?

5. What is gene-culture evolution?

(see the answer keys)

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