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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Where do the images of snakes in dreams likely come from, in Wilson's account?
(a) The Bible story of the garden of Eden.
(b) The mystic significance of snakes.
(c) A widespread fear of snakes.
(d) The intuition of subterranean experience.

2. What does Wilson say declined as people started to live longer in the nineteenth century?
(a) War.
(b) Reason and politeness.
(c) Crime and poverty.
(d) Greed.

3. How does Wilson describe ant colonies?
(a) As interdependent systems.
(b) As a kind of controlled chaos.
(c) As the sum of their constituent ants.
(d) As superorganisms.

4. What does Wilson credit animals with being able to see?
(a) The world beyond the spectrum of our vision.
(b) The urgency of nature.
(c) The causes beneath their actions.
(d) The present moment.

5. What does local positivism fail to distinguish between, in Wilson's narration?
(a) Material and ideal.
(b) Past and future.
(c) Concept and fact.
(d) Natural science and social science.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does science use as proof of a theory?

2. What is consilience?

3. What do the natural science stimulate, in Wilson's account?

4. What might be a consequence of the unification of knowledge, in Wilson's account?

5. When did the Enlightenment end, in Wilson's account?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is Wilson's theory a consequence of evolutionary theory?

2. Why does Wilson cite Einstein as an example of someone who practiced consilience?

3. How does science impact the arts, in E.O. Wilson's account?

4. How does consilience aim to resolve political problems?

5. What is the modern understanding of dreams?

6. How is knowledge accepted as settled, or final?

7. What is the modern understanding of how the brain works?

8. What does E.O. Wilson mean by the Ionian Enchantment?

9. What is the relationship between complexity theory and consilience?

10. How does Wilson use evolution as a parallel for consilience?

(see the answer keys)

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