Homunculus

[Fantom Tenej (1492-2003)]

HOMUNCULUS


The concept of a homunculus (Latin for "little man", sometimes spelled "homonculus") is often used to illustrate the functioning of a system. In the scientific sense of an unknowable prime actor, it can be viewed as an entity or agent.

The term appears to have been first used by the alchemist Paracelsus. He once claimed that he had created a false human being that he referred to as the homunculus. The creature was to have stood no more than 12 inches tall, and does the work usually associated with a golem. However, after a short time, the homunculus would turn on its creator and run away. The recipe consisted of a bag of bones, sperm, skin fragments and hair from any animal you wanted it to be a hybrid of. This was to be laid in the ground surrounded by horse manure for forty days, at which point the embryo would form.

































Needless to say, this procedure does not actually produce a viable homunculus, nor do the variants cited by other alchemists. One such variant involved the use of the mandrake. Popular belief held that this plant grew where the semen sometimes ejaculated by hanged men during the last convulsive spasms before death fell to the ground, and its roots vaguely resemble a human form to varying degrees. The root was to be picked before dawn on a Friday morning by a black dog, then washed and "fed" with milk and honey and, in some prescriptions, blood, whereupon it would fully develop into a miniature human which would guard and protect its owner. Yet a third method, cited by Dr. David Christianus at the University of Giessen during the 18th century, was to take an egg laid by a black hen, poke a tiny hole through the shell, replace a bean-sized portion of the white with human sperm, seal the opening with virgin parchment, and bury the egg in dung on the first day of the March lunar cycle. A miniature humanoid would emerge from the egg after thirty days, which would help and protect its creator in return for a steady diet of lavender seeds and earthworms.

The term homunculus was later used in the discussion of conception and birth. In 1694, Nicolaas Hartsoeker discovered "animalcules" in the sperm of humans and other animals. Some claimed that the sperm was in fact a "little man" (homunculus) that was placed inside a woman for growth into a child; these later became known as the spermists. This is not as silly as it sounds today, and neatly explained many of the mysteries of conception (for instance, why it takes two). However it was later pointed out that if the sperm was a homunculus, identical in all but size to an adult, then the homunculus must have sperm of its own. This led to a reductio ad absurdum, with a chain of homunculi "all the way down".

Today the term is used in a number of ways to describe systems that are thought of as being run by a "little man" inside. For instance, the homunculus continues to be considered as one of the major theories on the origin of consciousness, that there is a part (or process) in the brain whose purpose is to be "you". The homunculus is often invoked in cybernetics as well, for similar reasons


References

Florescu, Radu (1975) In Search of Frankenstein. Warner Books, New York.

Gregory, R.L. (1990) Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing, Oxford University Press Inc. New York.

Gregory, T.L. (1987). The Oxford Companion to Mind. Oxford University Press.

Ryle, G. (1949) The Concept of Mind. The University of Chicago Press, 1949.

Hideo Yamamoto (2005) Homunculus

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