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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 Transcendentalism justify war, in Edmund Wilson's account?
(a) Each side describes their cause as sacred.
(b) Each side poses as protecting an individual's rights.
(c) Each side refers to nature for their authority to fight.
(d) Each side relies on unifying logic.

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

3. What consequence does Wilson describe to technological advancement?
(a) Environmental damage.
(b) Racial discrimination.
(c) Unprecedented access to knowledge.
(d) Economic inequality.

4. Where does postmodernism fail to accord with science, in Edmund Wilson's account?
(a) In refusing to accept statistical modeling of individual behavior.
(b) In describing the arts as strictly cultural.
(c) In describing the brain as chaotic.
(d) In rooting creativity in social behavior.

5. Who does Wilson offer as evidence of thinkers affected by the concept of natural rights?
(a) Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
(b) Robespierre.
(c) Benjamin Franklin.
(d) Thomas Jefferson.

Short Answer Questions

1. Wilson defines culture in terms of what?

2. What evolution creates culture?

3. How does Wilson describe the difference between gifted and less-gifted artists' brains?

4. What is the danger of volitional evolution, in Edmund Wilson's account?

5. How do hereditarians see the evolution of culture?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the fundamental assumption behind consilience?

2. How do patterns in mental development connect genes to culture?

3. In what way are epi-genetic rules cross-cultural?

4. What is the purpose of the social sciences, and how does Wilson distinguish the social sciences from the physical social sciences?

5. How does art look through the gene-culture evolution paradigm Wilson offers?

6. How do the senses function as epi-genetic rules?

7. How does postmodern art resist consilience, in E.O. Wilson's account?

8. What ethical perspective does Wilson call the Transcendental view?

9. Where does ethics come from, in E.O. Wilson's account?

10. What role does Wilson say creativity has in survival and evolution?

(see the answer keys)

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