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. 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 brain as chaotic.
(c) In rooting creativity in social behavior.
(d) In describing the arts as strictly cultural.

2. What do modern technologies give humans the ability to choose?
(a) The direction of human evolution.
(b) The color of children's skin.
(c) The shape of their children's heads.
(d) The genetic superiority of a race.

3. How do widely distributed cultural traits affect genes?
(a) They prevent the spread of other cultural traits and other genes.
(b) They bolster the genes that predispose them.
(c) They limit the expression of genes responsible for less-widely distributed cultural traits.
(d) They allow the genes that predispose them to evolve.

4. What problem does Wilson attribute to failures in the social sciences?
(a) Failure to react to environmental disasters.
(b) Failure to regulate industry.
(c) Failure to foresee the collapse of the welfare state.
(d) Failure to remedy the inequality between the classes.

5. How much will sea levels theoretically rise if the ice caps melt?
(a) 120 cm.
(b) 90 cm.
(c) 30 cm.
(d) 60 cm.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is critical to the development of culture, in Edmund Wilson's account?

2. What beneficial uses can incest have in cultures, in Durham's account?

3. What does Edmund Wilson credit human nature with altering?

4. How does Transcendentalism justify war, in Edmund Wilson's account?

5. What will the combination of the arts and sciences ultimately create?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What does Wilson say is the relationship between human genetics and the development of culture?

3. What is the sign, in EO Wilson's account, that culture is evolving?

4. What are the two branches of anthropology Wilson describes, and what question does he say they both fail to answer?

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

6. What is volitional evolution, and what does Wilson say are its effects?

7. What is the fundamental assumption behind consilience?

8. What threats to contemporary culture does Wilson describe, and how is consilience useful in answering them?

9. What role does the incest taboo have in genetic and cultural development?

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

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 775 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample