ABSTRACT
Introduction All human existence is, in a sense, solitary. At conception each of us is genet ically unique. Though others are present and assist at our birth, we draw our first agonizing breath in the solitude of an alien world. At the moment of death we depart in the same fashion. . . . There is no greater loneliness in the universe than that of being confronted by knowledge: knowledge of one's past in a lizard skull, in the sunlit emptiness of a meadow, or the waiting menace of the forest. . . . On the world island we are all castaways (Eiseley, 1966, p. 1).
