A list built around two topics:

1. Making things small as part of an imaginative process ("Imaginative miniaturisation").

2. Interpreting the large in the small (see microcosm-macrocosm analogy).

Random related stuff to go in list (WIP) organised with small dots:

• Sciences: Cosmology (origins of the universe in the small), levels of explanation, multiscale modeling, microscopes, ...

• Art and iconography:

  • Topic (1) has its roots in Gaston Bachelard and Gilbert Durand. They use concepts like "Lilliputian Reveries" and "Gulliverisation" to highlight that making things small is a part of the imaginative process (not just interpreting the large in the small). Durand also states that (1) often has the following associated imagery:

    • Symbolic relationships between the miniature and gigantic, especially reversals where the small overcomes the large.

    • Obsessive details within art forms, e.g. architecture and painting.

    • Container symbolism and containers-within-containers (see the banner image and the entire alchemical process of making a homunculus). Nested symbolism.

  • "Cut-Continuity" in Japanese Aesthetics.

• Philosophy:

  • Platonism and Neoplatonism (Allegory), Pythagoreanism, Stoicism (sympatheia), Chinese Philosophy (Wuxing, the Dao and Wanwu), the Western Esoteric Tradition (Paracelsus and homunculi, Swedenborg's "correspondences," synchronicity and synchromysticism, Coincidentia Oppositorum), D&G (molecular-molar, rhizome-tree).

  • Ontology: Ways/Fragments/Remnants/Shards of Being.

  • Potential downsides to the concept/analogy/"image of thought": losing sight of the whole, pettiness and small-mindedness, reductionism.