Macrocosm and microcosm - Medieval and modern thought

Macrocosm and microcosm is an ancient Greek schema of seeing the same patterns reproduced in all levels of reality. It may have begun with Democritus in the fifth century B.C. or with Pythagoras and is a philosophical conception that runs through Socrates, and Plato and through to the Renaissance. With Pythagoras, the discovery of the golden ratio and its philosophical conception called the Golden mean, the Greeks saw that this golden ratio is repeated in all parts of the ordered universe both large and small. The Greeks were very con ...

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• Macrocosm and microcosm - Ancient thought
• Macrocosm and microcosm - Medieval and modern thought
• Macrocosm and microcosm - Bibliography

Read more here: » Macrocosm and microcosm: Encyclopedia - Macrocosm and microcosm

The English physician and alchemist Robert Fludd (1574-1637) expicitly based his work Utriusque Cosmi Historia (The history of the two worlds) upon the macro/micro correspondence; as does Sir Thomas Browne in his binary Discourses of 1658: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial depicts the small, temporal world of man, whilst The Garden of Cyrus represents the macrocosm, in which the ubiquitous a ...

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Macrocosm and microcosm, Macrocosm and microcosm - Ancient thought, Macrocosm and microcosm - Medieval and modern thought, Macrocosm and microcosm - Bibliography

Read more here: » Macrocosm and microcosm: Encyclopedia II - Macrocosm and microcosm - Medieval and modern thought

Macrocosm/microcosm is a principle in Socratic/Platonic philosophy. The Republic, most of it of Socratic influence, is based on this fundamental principle. The Republic is a discussion originally about righteousness (justice) for man and what is it. At §368, Socrates mentions that this virtue is “spoken as a virtue of an individual, and sometimes as the virtue of the state” and that it would be easier to discern its essence if one looked at the State because it would have a larger quantity of it and then proceeding back down int ...

See also:

Macrocosm and microcosm, Macrocosm and microcosm - Ancient thought, Macrocosm and microcosm - Medieval and modern thought, Macrocosm and microcosm - Bibliography

Read more here: » Macrocosm and microcosm: Encyclopedia II - Macrocosm and microcosm - Ancient thought