![]() ![]() A world does not exist in front of me, but is all around me and I live in it and am thus its part. Maurice Merleau-Ponty is pointing out that space in post-Euclidian world is not a grid of relations between objects, is not a scene which is looked at as by a geometer from afar, but, instead, space starts from me as the zero point of spatiality. In such a manner he is seizing them, they are becoming a part of him. Contemporary visual displaying of the body is becoming a field of dangerous relations (between natural and artificial, organic and non-organic), a potentiality, denoted with uncanniness and attractiveness of bodily openness.Ī human being lives in an environment and is a part of it he/she does not gaze at the world as at a display or something that is distant from him. Constituent elements of the installation with their perceptual and conceptual multi-extension are directing the observer to his or her own body. The Microcosm installation with a bathroom is a kind of an incubator, a giant petri-dish, which enables ideal conditions for cultivation of various micro organisms, originating from human body. 900–1000 CE), by the Andalusian mystic Ibn Arabi (1165–1240), and by the German cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464).Realizations: 2006, City Gallery of Villach, Austria 2002 City Gallery of Nova Gorica, Slovenia. 850–950 CE), by the anonymous Shi'ite philosophers known as the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ ("The Brethren of Purity", c. Nevertheless, the microcosm-macrocosm analogy was adopted by a wide variety of medieval thinkers, most notably by alchemists such as those writing under the name of Jabir ibn Hayyan (c. Medieval philosophy was generally dominated by Aristotle, who had posited a fundamental and unsurmountable difference between the region below the moon (the sublunary world, consisting of the four elements) and the region above the moon (the superlunary world, consisting of a fifth element). 300 CE), and the Neoplatonists (third century CE and onwards). ![]() 20 BCE – c. 50 CE), the authors of the early Greek Hermetica (c. In later periods, the analogy was especially prominent in the works of those philosophers who were heavily influenced by Platonic and Stoic thought, such as Philo of Alexandria (c. 348 BCE), the Hippocratic authors (late fifth or early fourth century BCE and onwards), and the Stoics (third century BCE and onwards). AntiquityĪmong ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers, notable proponents of the microcosm-macrocosm analogy included Anaximander (c. 610 – c. 546 BCE), Plato (c. 334–262 BCE), founder of the Stoic school of philosophy. In contemporary usage, the terms microcosm and macrocosm are also employed to refer to any smaller system that is representative of a larger one, and vice versa. However, the terms microcosm and macrocosm refer more specifically to the analogy as it was developed in ancient Greek philosophy and its medieval and early modern descendants. The view itself is ancient, and may be found in many philosophical systems world-wide, such as for example in ancient Mesopotamia, in ancient Iran, or in ancient Chinese philosophy. For example, the cosmological functions of the seven classical planets were sometimes taken to be analogous to the physiological functions of human organs, such as the heart, the spleen, the liver, the stomach, etc. Hence, it was sometimes inferred that the human mind or soul too was divine in nature.Īpart from this important psychological and noetic (i.e., related to the mind) application, the analogy was also applied to human physiology. Moreover, this cosmic mind or soul was often thought to be divine. One important implication of this view is that the cosmos as a whole may be considered to be alive, and thus to have a mind or soul (the world soul). ![]() Given this fundamental analogy, truths about the nature of the cosmos as a whole may be inferred from truths about human nature, and vice versa. The microcosm-macrocosm analogy (or, equivalently, macrocosm-microcosm analogy) refers to the view according to which there is a structural similarity between the human being (the microcosm, i.e., the small order or the small universe) and the cosmos as a whole (the macrocosm, i.e., the great order or the great universe). "Macrocosm and microcosm", engraving attached to Basilica Philosophica, third volume of Johann Daniel Mylius’ Opus Medico-Chymicum, Frankfurt ![]()
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