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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. When did the Enlightenment end, in Wilson's account?

2. What does Wilson say was the consequence of Robespierre's employment of the concept of the general will?

3. What is Wilson ultimately interested in producing with consilience?

4. Why have scientific models of the brain failed to explain consciousness?

5. Where does the unification of intellectual work have its benefit, in Wilson's account?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Wilson describe what it is possible to know about the brain?

2. Why is consilience especially important in studying the mind?

3. How has postmodernism affected Wilson's consilience?

4. How does Wilson describe the mindset necessary to be a scientist?

5. How would you describe Francis Bacon's influence on Wilson's idea of consilience?

6. In what way does Wilson distinguish between evolutionary progress and consilience?

7. How would you describe Condorcet's influence on Wilson's idea of consilience?

8. How is knowledge accepted as settled, or final?

9. How does Wilson use evolution as a parallel for consilience?

10. What is the relationship between complexity theory and consilience?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Part of Wilson's argument about the value of science is the technology that science has required for its own purposes, or produced for consumers, but applied science seems to be different than the pure science Wilson is talking about throughout 'Consilience', especially when the perpetual drive to innovate in business has required the policy of planned obsolescence, where everything technological is designed to be superseded by new products in the future. Does this present a problem for consilience, or is this beyond the scope of Wilson's argument? How do science's industrial uses, which seem to tend toward dispersion, relate with the possibility of science's unification?

Essay Topic 2

European and American birth rates are relatively low compared to many developing countries. How do you reconcile this with Wilson's arguments about evolution, and how the expansion of power over territory allows the dissemination of genes? Has America's influence been genetic? How would you characterize its influence, and reconcile its influence with its low birth rates?

Essay Topic 3

Where does the sense of proof reside in the body, or in experience? That is, how can a person tell the difference between a rational proof and a faulty proof, a faith-based proof or an irrational proof? If proof can be a final and complete experience, how does it distinguish between its sources? If proof is a temporary feeling that has to be reasserted--if it is a story that has to be retold again and again to be 'believed'--how does it account for the rest of experience, which tends to be chaotic and inscrutable, rather than clear and linear and rational?

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