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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. What does natural selection provide for a species?
(a) More diverse genetic options.
(b) New genetic combinations.
(c) More mating possibilities.
(d) Fewer dominant individuals.

2. How does Transcendentalism validate ethics?
(a) It ascribes natural law to God's will.
(b) It describes the individual as the source of all morality.
(c) It locates the moral reasoning in God, which is to say in everything.
(d) It treats the conscience as evidence of innate morality.

3. What is kin selection?
(a) The process by which people choose mates.
(b) The process by which parents decide which child to favor.
(c) The survival strategy by which people care most deeply for their kin.
(d) The strategy by which a family gives itself the best chance of expanding.

4. How many billion people can the earth sustain, theoretically?
(a) 16.
(b) 12.
(c) 22.
(d) 10.

5. How does Edmund Wilson describe the current era of economics?
(a) As the Era of Model Building.
(b) As the era of international debt.
(c) As the era of supply and demand.
(d) As the era of statistical analysis.

Short Answer Questions

1. What power does Wilson attribute to men who control large amounts of territory?

2. What problem does Wilson attribute to failures in the social sciences?

3. What statistic shows the strength of the transcendental view, in Edmund Wilson's account?

4. What did economists do during the Marginalist Era in economics?

5. Where does postmodernism fail to accord with science, in Edmund Wilson's account?

Short Essay Questions

1. What social science does Wilson credit with coming closest to consilience?

2. What is the fundamental assumption behind consilience?

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

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

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

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

7. What social problems does Wilson say are caused by failures in social sciences?

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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