could you answer this?

I have a midterm next week ... on Monday, to be precise. This will be my first genuinely challenging test in probably seven years, and I'm totally panicking about it.

(Unfortunately, before I can really panic, I have to cope with the inevitable joys of group work for a group presentation this Saturday... more on that later.)

Yesterday in class, my professor (graciously) provided us with a list of eight rambling questions meant to give us clues about the nature of information to be on this exam. Mind you, we've been talking about (or around) the answers to most of these questions since classes began; however, that doesn't automatically mean I or anyone else could actually *answer* said review questions.

Here's an example -- the easiest, actually, of the eight:

Define science. Discuss three sources of knowledge. Discuss why each of them alone is insufficient to generate accurate knowledge. Discuss why science requires empiricism and rationalism but also belief and faith. What is a better way of bringing mind, sense and faith together in the knowledge-attainment process? Give an example of how science can be self-limiting. Give another example of how it can be cognitively and logically limited.

Alright. So I could probably do a decent job of answering many of the prongs of that question, based on our class discussions. However, I'd never claim that I could, at this moment in time, give an acceptable answer -- gauged by my own sense of "acceptable" as well as, I suspect, my professor's.

But just in case that question didn't really impress you, here's what I currently consider to be the most difficult of the eight:

Discuss what demarcation critera mean to Popper, Kuhn and Lakatos. Discuss what a scientific revolution means to Kuhn and Lakatos. In your thinking, whose demarcation criterion is too restrictive and whose criterion is too permissive? In your thinking, which criterion would kill young theories and which one would allow them to stay past their "natural lifetime"? Kuhn accuses Popper of employing a demarcation criterion that applies only to science-in-crisis -- in your thinking, does scientific progress mean a continual lurching from one theory, program or methodology to another, or could it occur through gradual incrementalism? Discuss how "social communication" among a community could keep science in an ongoing state of normality or problem solving.

Crap.