278).īecause the word kosmos can mean order as well as world or world order, "microcosm" can signify not only man in relation to the universe (or in relation to the state, as in Plato's Republic ) but also any part of a thing, especially a living thing, that reflects or represents the whole it belongs to, whenever there is a mirroring relation between the whole and each of its parts. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. ![]() There is in fact one breath pervading the whole cosmos like soul, and uniting us with them" (W. Thus, the followers of Pythagoras and Empedocles held, according to Sextus Empiricus, that "there is a certain community uniting us not only with each other and with the gods but even with the brute creation. ![]() If man is the microcosm of the universe, then not only is everything animated by some soul or other, but there is one world soul by which everything is animated. Animism and panpsychism also regard the world as alive throughout, but the microcosm idea is distinct in emphasizing the unity or kinship of all life and thought in the world. By an imaginative leap, the universe itself was thought to be, like man, living and conscious, a divine creature whose nature is reflected in human existence. According to one version of this ancient analogy, man and the universe are constructed according to the same harmonic proportions, each sympathetically attuned to the other, each a cosmos ordered according to reason. "Macrocosm" and "microcosm" are philosophical terms referring, respectively, to the world as a whole and to some part, usually man, as a model or epitome of it.
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