Furthermore, the external disturbances that threaten the microcosm cause the orbits of its soul to be disrupted, throwing its emotions into disarray. Unlike the macrocosm, which contains all things and is immortal, and hence has no need of sensory or digestive organs or limbs for locomotion, the microcosm is only a part of the whole, and its existence is threatened by the surrounding elements, so that it needs such additional parts to perceive and avoid danger and to replenish the nutrients it loses. The rest of the human body exists merely to serve the head. Just as the body of the universe is spherical, and its soul is composed of orbits along which the planets wander, so too the soul of the human being is composed of orbits along which its emotions rove, and it inhabits the head, which is spherical. Plato expounded this theme at greater length in the Timaeus (29d –47e), where he explained how the structure of the human being parallels that of the universe through certain correspondences in body and soul. The universe is, therefore, not only an orderly system but an intelligent organism as well. In the Philebus (28d –30d), Plato argued that human beings and the universe are both composed of an elemental body and a rational soul, and that just as the human body derives from the universe's body, the human soul must derive from the universe's soul. Plato did not use the terminology when he developed the idea. Among extant Greek texts, the term first appears in the Physics of Aristotle (384 –322 b.c.e.), where it occurs in an incidental remark ( Physics 8.2, 252b). Since comparisons of human beings and the universe were made in India and China, the concept may ultimately be of Asian origin but the available sources do not indicate that the theory in Greece was the result of cultural diffusion. Some form of the idea seems to have been common among most ancient cultures. 507 b.c.e.) are quite late, dating to the fifth and ninth centuries c.e., respectively. Unfortunately, it is impossible to reconstruct their thinking in much detail, and clear references attributing the doctrine to Democritus (c. The idea may have begun as an archetypal theme of mythology that the pre-Socratic philosophers reworked into a more systematic form. The most fully developed version of the idea in antiquity was made by Plato (427? –347 b.c.e.), but fragmentary evidence indicates that philosophers before him articulated some version of it. The ideas were commonplace during the Renaissance and early modern times but lost their plausibility when a mechanistic model of the universe became dominant in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These analogies enjoyed a long life, first in the Mediterranean region during antiquity and later throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. Comparisons between society and the human being, as well as society and the universe, were varieties of microcosmic theory. Kosmos at this time meant "order" in a general sense and implied a harmonious, and therefore beautiful, arrangement of parts in any organic system hence it also referred to order in human societies, reflected in good government. These early thinkers viewed the individual human being as a little world ( mikros kosmos ) whoseĬomposition and structure correspond to that of the universe, or great world ( makros kosmos, or megas kosmos ). Microcosm and macrocosm are two aspects of a theory developed by ancient Greek philosophers to describe human beings and their place in the universe.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |