MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM

The macrocosm is the world as a whole, with a microcosm being one small part, often mankind, taken as a model of it. Thus the universe may be regarded as a large living organism (see panpsychism ). The idea was central to most Greek thought, and especially that of Pythagoras, Plato and subsequent Neoplatonism . In Leibniz the monads are microcosms of the world, since each in itself mirrors the entire universe.