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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through The Natural Sciences.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is reductionism?
(a) The analysis of components of a system or problem.
(b) The use of abstractions and generalizations to explain phenomena.
(c) The analysis of the interrelation of all the parts of a system or problem.
(d) The study of the context for a system or problem.

2. What does Wilson say evidence from the natural sciences says about Enlightenment thinkers?
(a) They made correct assumptions about the evolution of species.
(b) They made correct assumptions about the presence of dinosaurs.
(c) They made correct assumptions about the material world.
(d) They made correct assumptions about the nature of divinity.

3. What does Wilson credit animals with being able to see?
(a) The present moment.
(b) The world beyond the spectrum of our vision.
(c) The urgency of nature.
(d) The causes beneath their actions.

4. What did Condorcet pioneer?
(a) The notion of innate human rights.
(b) The application of statistics to politics.
(c) The development of statistical models for economics.
(d) The application of math in social science.

5. How are scientific theories constructed and used within the scientific community, in Wilson's account?
(a) They rely on intuition as much as observable results.
(b) They can be discarded if disproved.
(c) They are made to define eternal laws.
(d) They sketch but never define natural phenomena.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who influenced Wilson's idea of unified learning?

2. What does Wilson say that humans are incapable of seeing?

3. What did Enlightenment thinkers tried to link, in Wilson's account?

4. What interpret does Wilson give the myth of Icarus?

5. How does Wilson characterize the current state of knowledge?

(see the answer key)

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