Microcosm

1. A community, institution, or other unity believed to be an epitome of a larger unity.

2. A Renaissance philosophical term designating man as being a little world in which the macrocosm or universe is reflected. This supposed analogy between the whole and its parts served to develop a humanistic cosmology in which the reality of the individual received due attention.

3. In Russian speculative philosophy, not man, but the earth or organic world (as in Gurdjief); or the biosphere with its upper reaches in the noosphere (as is Vernadsky).