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While the field of neurobiology and the study of neurological and psychological behavior is in a state of ever-emerging progress, I have learned from this course that the best we can really do is hope to "get it less wrong". We will never have all of the answers--not about the brain, let alone the universe. And that's the way it should be. We are constantly revising, improving, evolving...

If we had all the answers, where would we go from there?

With this reflection on our current state and our vast accumulation of knowledge, such a discourse inevitably brings one back to the beginning. Was there ever a "first"? Can there be a first philosophy? In the spirit of "getting it less wrong", perhaps we can only hope to start somewhere in the middle. As celebrated twentieth century American philosopher and logician W.V. Quine said, "There is no vantage point, no first philosophy."

This, then, brings me to what I see as the ultimate question driving present Western Civlization as we know it: Genesis or Big Bang? To begin to answer such a question, or rather to begin to "get it less wrong", we must ask ourselves several pertinent questions. For instance, if one were to set aside ideological disparities, is it simply a matter of incorrect interpretation? Therefore, are science and the Bible not truly at odds? If not, can such a problem ever be reconciled? Perhaps the best we can do is get it less wrong.