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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. How does Wilson explain the ideal scientist's work ethic?
(a) Think like eagles, work like ants.
(b) Think like whales, work like minnows.
(c) Think like poets, work like bookkeepers.
(d) Think like children, work like fathers.

2. What event marks the end of the Enlightenment, in Wilson's account?
(a) The American Revolution.
(b) The French Revolution.
(c) The birth of Wordsworth.
(d) The death of de Sade.

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

4. How does consilience help us understand organisms?
(a) By examining their organization.
(b) By seeing their evolution.
(c) By examining their environment.
(d) By reconstructing them from cells.

5. What idea of Locke's survived the Enlightenment into Romanticism?
(a) The idea of transcendent experiences.
(b) The idea mystical states.
(c) The idea of inevitable progress.
(d) The idea of natural rights.

Short Answer Questions

1. What did Freud focus on, in his investigation of dreams?

2. How does Wilson characterize the relationship between consilience and the material world?

3. How can scientists monitor the working brain, in Wilson's account?

4. What are the nerve cells in the brain called?

5. Under what circumstances are theories accepted universally?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Wilson offer the physical sciences as a metaphor for consilience?

2. How would you describe Rene Descartes' influence on Wilson's idea of consilience?

3. How would you describe Rousseau's influence on Wilson's idea of consilience?

4. What is the relationship between chaos theory and consilience?

5. What three-part division does Wilson divide the brain into?

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

7. How does Wilson offer ants as a metaphor for consilience?

8. How does Wilson offer dreams as an example of the need for consilience?

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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