microcosm

mi·cro·cosm   (mī'krə-kŏz'əm)    n.  A small, representative system having analogies to a larger system in constitution, configuration, or development: "He sees the auto industry as a microcosm of the U.S. itself" (William J. Hampton). [Middle English microcosme, man as a little world, from Old French, from Late Latin mīcrocosmus, from Greek mīkros kosmos : mīkros, small + kosmos, world, order.] mi'cro·cos'mic (-kŏz'mĭk), mi'cro·cos'mi·cal (-mĭ-kəl) adj., mi'cro·cos'mi·cal·ly adv.

Microcosm

Mi"cro*cosm\, n. [F. microcosme, L. microcosmus, fr. Gr. mikro`s small + ko`smos the world.] A little world; a miniature universe. Hence (so called by Paracelsus), a man, as a supposed epitome of the exterior universe or great world. Opposed to macrocosm. --Shak.

microcosm

A representation of something on a much smaller scale. Microcosm means “small world,” and in the thought of the Renaissance, it was applied specifically to human beings, who were considered to be small-scale models of the universe, with all its variety and contradiction. (Compare macrocosm.)

microcosm 

microcosm

(from Greek mikros kosmos, "little world"), a Western philosophical term designating man as being a "little world" in which the macrocosm, or universe, is reflected. The ancient Greek idea of a world soul (e.g., in Plato) animating the universe had as a corollary the idea of the human body as a miniature universe animated by its own soul. The notion of the microcosm dates, in Western philosophy, from Socratic times (Democritus specifically referred to it)-i.e., from the 5th century BC. Propagated especially by the Neoplatonists, the idea passed to the Gnostics, to the Christian scholastics, to the Jewish Kabbalists, and to such Renaissance philosophers as Paracelsus. The supposed analogy between the whole and its parts served not only to develop a cosmology in which the reality of the individual received due attention but was also fundamental to astrology and other fields in which belief in a metaphysical relationship between man and the rest of nature is postulated. In later philosophy the monadology of G.W. Leibniz presented a comparable view of man and the universe; and, in the 19th century, Rudolf Lotze chose Mikrokosmus as the title of his major work on the theory of knowledge and reality.

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