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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. Why does Edmund Wilson say that human existence in the future will depend on ethics?
(a) Because people will only work together once they can frame the problems.
(b) Because evolution favors contract formation.
(c) Because the alternative to self-extinction is preserving the others around the self.
(d) Because empathy will prevent exploitation.

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

3. What is the traditional view of art?
(a) That it has no end or purpose except in itself.
(b) That it is the latest biological development.
(c) That it developed when language developed.
(d) That it evolved with the brain's genes.

4. What does Edmund Wilson say wars are products of?
(a) Political failures.
(b) Resources and demand.
(c) Genes and culture.
(d) Technological imbalances.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What are epigenetic rules?

2. How many billion people can the earth sustain, theoretically?

3. How does Edmund Wilson describe the current era of economics?

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

5. What does Edmund Wilson say the arts ultimately create?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. How do social factors influence genetic distribution?

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

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

6. What is the fundamental assumption behind consilience?

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

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

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

10. What does Wilson say the liberal arts should address?

(see the answer keys)

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