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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. What does Wilson say evidence from the natural sciences says about Enlightenment thinkers?

2. What does Wilson mean by the Ionian Enchantment'?

3. According to complexity theory, what is the result of living on the edge of chaos?

4. What do nerve cells in the brain send signals along?

5. How would you describe the relationship between Descartes' theories and modern science of the brain?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does consilience provide as an educational policy?

2. How does the modern theory of dreams explain something like the presence and significance of snakes in dreams, in Wilson's account?

3. What is the relationship between chaos theory and consilience?

4. What justification does Wilson provide for integrating philosophy with biology, social science and the humanities?

5. What does the term "consilience" mean?

6. How would you describe John Locke's influence on Wilson's idea of consilience?

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

8. How did Wilson arrive at his theory of consilience?

9. How would you describe Condorcet's influence on Wilson's idea of 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

How does the advent of symmetric multiprocessing computing change the face of science and scientific knowledge? Specifically, how does the ability to crunch enormous amounts of information in multi-variable formulas affect the ability of scientists to describe nature? Does it create a favorable environment for consilience of all the sciences? Or does it reduce things to the laws of statistical probability and math?

Essay Topic 2

How does Wilson refute claims by philosophers of individual experience, who say that truth is personal, and that the search for unity of knowledge will always result in self-opposition, as Freud shows is the case in the unconscious? Does Wilson seem to be at war with himself anywhere within the book, or are his ideas consistent with the possibility of unification of knowledge?

Essay Topic 3

Wilson's book begins and ends with a call for better efficiency and use of knowledge in solving problems. To what extent is consilience really Wilson's response to the dangers of industrial modernism? Is consilience really about knowledge and disciplines, or is it about clearing the way for scientists to contribute their experience to solving problems?

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