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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 many billion people live in absolute poverty, at the time of Wilson's writing?
(a) One and a half.
(b) Two.
(c) One half.
(d) One.

2. What do the arts need science for?
(a) To fulfill artistic prophecies.
(b) To stimulate interpretation.
(c) To test artistic theories.
(d) To demonstrate the truth of artistic visions.

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

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

5. How, in Edmund Wilson's account, was moral reasoning affected by natural science?
(a) Natural law created natural rights.
(b) Natural laws dispelled taboos.
(c) Natural laws clarified the location of the moral sense.
(d) Natural laws helped establish social laws.

Short Answer Questions

1. How do hereditarians see the evolution of culture?

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

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

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

5. How does Transcendentalism validate ethics?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What is the fundamental assumption behind consilience?

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

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

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

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

8. How do social factors influence genetic distribution?

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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