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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. The USS Yorktown was used as the test-bed for what Navy program beginning in 1996?
(a) The Smart Ship program.
(b) The Drone program.
(c) The Eastern Invasion program.
(d) The Subatomic program.

2. Approximately when was Giordano Bruno born?
(a) 1623.
(b) 1459.
(c) 1548.
(d) 1366.

3. René Descartes was a French philosopher and mathematician who spent most of his adult life where?
(a) Great Britain.
(b) South America.
(c) The Dutch Republic.
(d) Northern Africa.

4. Who founded the House of Wisdom that was established in Abbasid-era Baghdad, Iraq?
(a) Sahl ibn Harun.
(b) Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī.
(c) Hunayn ibn Ishaq.
(d) Caliph Harun al-Rashid.

5. What word did the Arabs use for zero during Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Khwarizmi’s time?
(a) Sifr.
(b) Zeno.
(c) Zephyr.
(d) Siro.

6. The author notes in Chapter 2, “Nothing Comes of Nothing” that the West resisted the concept of zero for how many years?
(a) 1,000.
(b) 3,000.
(c) 500.
(d) 2,000.

7. Where does the author say early medieval Jews took up residence and discovered that Aristotle’s aversion to zero contradicted Jewish theology in Chapter 3, “Nothing Ventured”?
(a) South America.
(b) Rome.
(c) Ancient Egypt.
(d) Muslim Spain.

8. Where did Copernicus live?
(a) Egypt.
(b) Rome.
(c) Prussia.
(d) France.

9. When the Indians adopted a Babylonian style number system, its base was what, according to the author in Chapter 3, “Nothing Ventured”?
(a) 20.
(b) 10.
(c) 5.
(d) 60.

10. Pythagoreanism developed into two separate schools of thought. What group was called “the listeners” in Greek?
(a) The omnimatioi.
(b) The akousmatikoi.
(c) The mathēmatikoi.
(d) The Hippasusikoi.

11. How many minutes made up an hour in the ancient Greek system?
(a) 30.
(b) 100.
(c) 60.
(d) 50.

12. The ancient Babylonians had a number system based on what increment?
(a) 20.
(b) 10.
(c) 60.
(d) 5.

13. Where was Giordano Bruno from?
(a) France.
(b) Spain.
(c) Italy.
(d) Great Britain.

14. Aristotle was a student of what Classical Greek philosopher?
(a) Pythagoras.
(b) Socrates.
(c) Archimedes.
(d) Plato.

15. What 12 Century rabbi sought to reconcile Greek philosophy with the Semitic Bible?
(a) Robert Wexler.
(b) Shlomo ben Aderet.
(c) Nahmanides.
(d) Maimonides.

Short Answer Questions

1. The author states in Chapter 3, “Nothing Ventured” that India adopted a Babylonian style number system around what century?

2. The author states in Chapter 2, “Nothing Comes of Nothing” that the concepts of infinity and the void frightened the ancient Greeks. They feared the infinite because it threatened the possibility of what?

3. What term refers to an argument that produces an inconsistency?

4. Approximately when did Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Khwarizmi live?

5. The preclassic Maya and their neighbors supposedly developed the concept of zero by what year?

(see the answer keys)

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