midterm review

ID Section (75%)

You will be required to identify at least 25 of the following names & terms in the multiple choice ID section of the midterm:

Plate Tectonics
Cretaceous Tertiary Mass Extinction
Milankovitch Cycles
Late Pleistocene Extinctions
Stephen Jay Gould
nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA)
"Hydraulic Civilization"
Ma'at
Yahweh
Karma
The Mandate of Heaven
The Flood
The Tower of Babel
Sodom and Gommorah
Santorini (a.k.a. Thera) Eruption
Vesuvius
“The Last Day of Pompeii”
Mt. Etna
Great Fire of London
Laki, Iceland
Mt. Tambora
Mt. Krakatau
Shaanxi Earthquake
Great Lisbon Earthquake
Voltaire
Gottfried Leibniz
New Madrid Earthquakes
Great Chicago Fire
Great Fire of Hong Kong
Galveston Hurricane
San Francisco Earthquake
Great Mississippi Flood
Yellow River Flood
Ashgabat Earthquake
Bihar Earthquake
Mahatma Gandhi
Rabindranath Tagore
Valdivia Earthquake
1970 Bhola Cyclone
Tangshan Earthquake
Loma Prieta Earthquake
Indian Ocean Tsunami
Hurricane Katrina
Haiti Earthquake
Pat Robertson
The Anthropocene


ESSAY (25%)

You will be required to write an essay on ONE of the following topics:

X. Discuss Stephen Jay Gould's concept of "nonoverlapping magisteria" or NOMA in relation to the problem of natural disasters. Citing specific examples, discuss how scientific and religious explanations for natural disasters competed in the past, and how they still sometimes compete in the present. What are the main reasons, in your view, that people are inclined to seek religious explanations for such catastrophes?

Y. Consider the evolution of human innovations such as agriculture, urbanization (from the very earliest cities to the present), science, and industrialization in relation to natural disasters and other large scale catastrophes. Citing specific examples, consider those cases in which our innovations have made us less vulnerable to large scale catastrophes, and consider those cases in which these innovations have made us more vulnerable to large scale catastrophes.