Learn English – word for human litter-mates

At the simplest level, it's race for people, and breed for animals.

From Oxford Dictionaries - race (emphasis mine): "Each of the major divisions of humankind". [It then goes on to give lots of specific meanings, just in case anyone thinks that's too simplistic a definition of a highly-charged word.]

And from the same dictionary - breed (emphasis mine again): "A stock of animals or plants within a species having a distinctive appearance and typically having been developed by deliberate selection."

However, the same entry then gives a second definition for breed: "A sort or kind of person or thing". So you could say, for example, that people who spend Saturday night posting to Internet forums are a special breed of people. That's a metaphorical usage - it doesn't imply that the people share common DNA.

And no, you'd never say human breed; the stock expression is human race.

Easily the best question ever posted on the site, and I adore your conception and description of prose as zoomed-in and zoomed-out, close-up v. wide shots. I and I'm sure all writers constantly think about this fundamental tension - should I write most fundamental tension - in writing, and you're very insightful to concretize it - and it's amazing there's no specific word for this.

Just a thought on your question c

c) The dichotomy of the two?

Regarding writing that is highly aware of and uses well the dichotomy between the two, I would use the word from painting

chiaroscuro

(Go see some Caravaggio {perhaps a better phrase there is go get kicked in the face by the Caravaggio horse} if not fully gut-familiar with this.)

Of course, you can use chiaroscuro to talk about or emphasize the dichotomy between any two "values", it's the word you use when you want to describe that an artist recognises and clarifies two extremes of some quality (of course, in painting, "lighting".)

I suggest that chiaroscuro works very well when describing prose with, well, a chiaroscuro of close-upness .. perhaps the phrase "a chiaroscuro of scale" almost captures what you mean. If there was a SWR "X" for what you're saying, "X chiaroscuro" works well.