View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. After considering all the different contexts for ants' communication, how does Wilson describe their form of communication?
(a) As electrochemical resonance.
(b) As instinctive teamwork.
(c) As released pheromones.
(d) As socially conditioned.

2. What political movement did Condorcet inspire?
(a) The French Revolution.
(b) The abolition of slavery in the New World.
(c) The abolition of slavery in French colonies.
(d) The American Revolution.

3. What would need to be true before we could establish the goals and progress of evolutionary processes, in Wilson's account?
(a) We would need to know that evolution tended toward increase complexity.
(b) We would have to have tools that would let us predict how random acts would play out.
(c) The human race would have to have been obliterated like the dinosaurs.
(d) We would have to know the future of our race.

4. What decision was effectively made in human evolution as the brain found its present size?
(a) Intelligence over strength.
(b) Excess over efficiency.
(c) Curiosity over security.
(d) Dreams over experiences.

5. What purpose does Wilson say dreams serve?
(a) Telling the conscious self about the doings of its unconscious.
(b) Improving responses relevant to survival.
(c) Giving the self access to the collective unconscious.
(d) Developing the soul through cathexes.

Short Answer Questions

1. What did Enlightenment thinkers tried to link, in Wilson's account?

2. What does Wilson say evidence from the natural sciences says about Enlightenment thinkers?

3. What was Wilson's relationship with the term 'Consilience'?

4. What does Wilson say declined as people started to live longer in the nineteenth century?

5. What is the difference between primary and secondary emotions?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is reductionism, and what makes it useful for science?

2. How would you describe Francis Bacon's influence on Wilson's idea of consilience?

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

4. What does Wilson offer as an alternative to scientific knowledge and consilience?

5. How would you describe Condorcet's influence on Wilson's idea of consilience?

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

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

8. What ancient sources does Wilson trace consilience back to?

9. How would you describe Wilson's relationship with religion?

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

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 790 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample