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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through To What End?.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Wilson say about the complexity of the social sciences?
(a) They are more complex than physics.
(b) They can be modeled by animal cultures.
(c) They can be eliminated through military science.
(d) They can be unraveled by computers.

2. What were ethics constructed around, according to Wilson?
(a) The notion that human acts have consequences.
(b) The notion that the gods observe human actions.
(c) The notion that justice is independent.
(d) The notion that human beings can be perfected.

3. What will the combination of the arts and sciences ultimately create?
(a) Transcendence.
(b) The evolution of the brain.
(c) The genetic source of imagination.
(d) The revelation of the source of creativity.

4. What political movement did Condorcet inspire?
(a) The abolition of slavery in the New World.
(b) The American Revolution.
(c) The French Revolution.
(d) The abolition of slavery in French colonies.

5. What philosophical assumption underlay the notion that evolution followed simple laws?
(a) Mysticism.
(b) Idealism.
(c) Materialism.
(d) Transcendentalism.

Short Answer Questions

1. When was Condorcet born?

2. What can biological research do for complexity theory, in Wilson's account?

3. What is consilience?

4. How does consilience help us understand organisms?

5. Where does Edmund Wilson say consilience is beneficial?

(see the answer key)

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