Hip Glossary: Macrocosm/microcosm

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 5th 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 concerned with a rational explanation of everything and saw this repetition of the golden mean as a pattern that was reproduced throughout reality. It is a product of the ancient Greek mentality of seeing reality as a whole and noticing patterns that are repeated throughout all the levels of reality. In short, it is the recognition that the same traits appear in entities of many different sizes, from one man to the entire human population.

Macrocosm/microcosm is a Greek compound of μακρο- "Macro-" and μικρο- "Micro-", which are Greek respectively for "large" and "small", and the word κόσμος kósmos which means "order" as well as "world" or "ordered world".