ABSTRACT
For a long period of time, before the advent of the scientific age, cosmological speculation was closely bound to cosmogenies or religious accounts or stories that accounted for the origin of the Universe. Ecology, if back then it existed as a 'science' at all, was clearly subsumed within the prevailing cosmo-theological outlook. While Pierre Teilhard de Chardin can never be said to have been unaware of the possibility of an ecological crisis in the offing, his earliest reference to it seems to have been, if any thing, cheerily optimistic. He had already spoken at length on numerous occasions about absolute need for the sense of solidarity with and rootedness in the earth that is a matrix of the very existence. The option or choice that he puts is actually three-fold: optimism vs. pessimism; withdrawal vs. engagement; and finally, individualism vs. solidarity.
