Quiz: Science of Logic

15 questions drawn at random. Score 80% for a silver medal.

1. How, in the story Hegel tells, did Diogenes answer a dialectician who demonstrated the contradiction in motion? He appealed to Aristotle’s Physics He conceded that motion was impossible He silently walked up and down He wrote a refutation in verse
2. According to the Aristotle passage Hegel quotes, why did mathematics develop early in Egypt? Its priestly caste had leisure The Nile floods required land surveys Egyptian merchants needed accounts Its kings paid philosophers
3. Which determination does Hegel call “the root of all movement and life”? Variety of things Absolute difference Identity with itself Contradiction
4. In chemism, what serves as the neutral medium of communication in matter and in spirit? Electricity in matter, and money as currency in spirit Fire in matter, and the state with its laws in spirit Air in matter, and feeling or sympathy in spirit Water in matter, and language in spirit
5. Whose method of finding normals and tangents does Hegel praise as “the brilliant device of a true analytic mind”? Gottfried Leibniz Isaac Barrow Pierre de Fermat René Descartes
6. What does Hegel say about the worst state, whose reality least corresponds to its concept? It is not a state at all and has no share in the Idea It is still Idea in so far as it exists, since its members still obey a ruling concept It is pure appearance, like the thing-in-itself It is a goal to be approached by endless progress
7. What example does Hegel use to argue that finite causality is tautological? A seed causing the plant Rain causing dampness The sun causing the day A spark causing an explosion
8. What does Hegel say the claim that the whole is equal to its parts really expresses? The superiority of the parts over the whole A law of nature discovered by experiment and measurement A tautology: the whole is equal to the whole The infinite divisibility of matter into parts
9. What example does Hegel give of a formal syllogism whose correct conclusion can still be false? A stick that looks bent when half under water A canvas painted blue that is also covered with yellow, and so is green A coin assumed fair because it has two sides A swan judged white because all observed swans are white
10. How does Hegel describe the shape of the science at the end of the Logic? A straight line advancing to infinity A circle of circles A pyramid resting on self-evident axioms A tree branching from a single root without return
11. Which ancient doctrine does Hegel identify with the stage of the One and the Void? Stoic physics Pythagorean number theory Eleatic monism Atomism
12. According to Hegel’s Observation, what fault does he find in Spinoza’s treatment of the attributes? Of infinite attributes, only Thought and Extension appear, taken up empirically Spinoza makes Extension the only attribute and reduces Thought to it Spinoza denies that substance has any attributes, admitting only modes Spinoza derives the attributes from the Mode, reversing their true order
13. How does Hegel describe the perishing of finite things? Perishing belongs to their being: their birth is the hour of their death It is an illusion of the understanding It is caused entirely by external forces that act on them from outside It is merely contingent, so in principle they could exist without perishing
14. What example does Hegel give to show that the rule “a classification must exhaust the Notion” is empty? The classification of states into monarchies and republics A further dozen species added to the existing sixty-seven species of parrots The discovery of new planets beyond Uranus The division of triangles into right-angled and other triangles
15. What does Hegel say about water cooled to its freezing point? It cannot be cooled to freezing point unless it is first boiled It hardens little by little from the surface down towards the bottom Left still it may stay liquid; a slight shake hardens it at once It passes gradually through a paste-like consistency before freezing

0 of 15 answered