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

2. What cannot be expressed by brain imaging, in Edmund Wilson's account?
(a) The locus of artistic appreciation.
(b) The genetic predisposition toward artistic work.
(c) Traits responsible for art.
(d) Reactions to art.

3. What does Edmund Wilson say the arts ultimately create?
(a) Religion.
(b) Science.
(c) Rituals and consistency.
(d) Consilience.

4. What is the danger of volitional evolution, in Edmund Wilson's account?
(a) People can become less human.
(b) Pandemics can be created.
(c) Sea levels can rise.
(d) Populations can be eradicated.

5. What does status give a man power to do, in Edmund Wilson's account?
(a) Have more wives.
(b) Have more influence.
(c) Have more offspring.
(d) Have more money.

Short Answer Questions

1. How, in Edmund Wilson's account, was moral reasoning affected by natural science?

2. What do the arts do that makes them different from the sciences, in Edmund Wilson's account?

3. What were ethics constructed around, according to Wilson?

4. What field does culture need to be linked with, in order to be explained, according to Wilson?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the difference between nurturists and hereditarians in describing how culture evolves?

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

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

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

5. What ethical perspective does Wilson call the empiricist view?

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

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

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

9. What is the consilient view of religious ethics?

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

(see the answer keys)

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