ABSTRACT
The correspondence between the macrocosm and microcosm was transformed, during the Renaissance, into a new metaphor of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. The cosmos became a unified but unbounded structure ordered through universal laws of nature. The intimate reality of human experience could no longer be conceptualized as a metaphor or symbol of an all-inclusive order. The human world must conform to the same laws as the rest of nature. Yet the dignity of man, which had been one of the central ideas of the Renaissance, seemed to imply a privileged status for the human.
