| MICROCOSM AND MACROCOSM |
| The
concepts of
microcosm (from Greek, micros: small and cosmos: orderly world) and
macrocosm (from Greek, macros: wide and cosmos: orderly world) point out
the correspondence between the individual (man or animal) and the
universe. The universe or macrocosm is thus interpreted as a living
being, while the individual or microcosm is considered in cosmic terms
because he summarizes the perfection of the whole world.
The universe was seen according to presocratic thinking (especially in Anassimene and Empedocle) as a "big animal". This view recurs into the Timeo of Plato and then in stoic and neoplatonic cosmologies. Aristotelian physics refused every form of cosmological animism. During the Renaissance the main thinkers as Cusano, Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Bruno and Campanella believed in an identity in structure between man and world. This view influenced the approach to magic thinking which operated on nature according to sympathies and antipathies, correspondences and analogies between the part and the total. The concepts of microcosm and macrocosm became less and less important with the affirmation of modern science. |