An homunculus (Latin for "little human", plural is "homunculi"; the diminutive of homo, "human") is, most generally, any representation of a human being. It 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.

“Preformationism,” a theory of heredity, claimed either the egg or the sperm (exactly which was a contentious issue) contained a complete preformed individual called a homunculus. Development was therefore a matter of enlarging this into a fully formed being.

[edit] Homunculus of alchemy

In Carl Jung's studies of alchemy, he believed the first record of an homunculus in alchemical literature appeared in the Visions of Zosimos, written in the third century AD, although the actual word "homunculus" was never used. In the visions, Zosimos mentions encountering a man who impales him with a sword, and then undergoes "unendurable torment," his eyes become blood, he spews forth his flesh, and changes into "the opposite of himself, into a mutilated anthroparion [a Greek alchemical concept of a being somewhat similar to a golem but possessing a sense of will and intelligence], and he tore his flesh with his own teeth, and sank into himself," which is a rather grotesque personification of the ouroboros, the dragon that bites its own tail, which represents the dyophysite nature in alchemy: the balance of two principles. Zosimos later encounters several other homunculi, named as the Brazen Man, the Leaden Man, and so forth. Commonly, the homunculi "submit themselves to unendurable torment" and undergo alchemical transformation. Zosimos made no mention of actually creating an artificial human, but rather used the concept of personifying inanimate metals to further explore alchemy.^[1]

In Islamic alchemy, Takwin (Arabic: تكوين‎) was a goal of certain Muslim alchemists, notably Jabir ibn Hayyan (later known as Geber in Europe). In the alchemical context, Takwin refers to the artificial creation of life in the laboratory, up to and including human life.

There are also variants cited by other alchemists. One such variant involved the use of the mandrake. Popular belief held that this plant grew where semen 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 semen, 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.

[edit] Homunculus of spermists

Homunculi in sperm as drawn by N. Hartsoecker in 1695

The term homunculus was later used in the discussion of conception and birth. In 1694, Nicolas Hartsoeker discovered "animalcules" in the semen of humans and other animals. This was the beginning of spermists' theory, who held the belief that the sperm was in fact a "little man" (homunculus) that was placed inside a woman for growth into a child. This seemed to them to neatly explain many of the mysteries of conception. It was later pointed out that if the sperm was a homunculus, identical in all but size to an adult, then the homunculus may have sperm of its own. This led to a reductio ad absurdum, with a chain of homunculi "all the way down". This was not necessarily considered by spermists a fatal objection however, as it neatly explained how it was that "in Adam" all had sinned: the whole of humanity was already contained in his loins. The spermists' theory also failed to explain why children tend to resemble their mothers as well as their fathers, though some spermists believed that the growing homunculus assimilated maternal characteristics from the womb environment in which they grew.^[2]

[edit] Sensory and motor homunculi

The homunculus is also commonly used to describe the distorted human figure drawn to reflect the relative space human body parts occupy on the somatosensory cortex (sensory homunculus) and the motor cortex (motor homunculus). The lips, hands, feet and sex organs have more sensory neurons than other parts of the body, so the homunculus has correspondingly large lips, hands, feet, and genitals. Well known in the field of neurology, this is also commonly called 'the little man inside the brain.'

[edit] Homunculus argument in the philosophy of mind

A Homunculus argument accounts for a phenomenon in terms of the very phenomenon that it is supposed to explain (Richard Gregory, 1987). Homunculus arguments are always fallacious. In the psychology and philosophy of mind 'homunculus arguments' are useful for detecting where theories of mind fail or are incomplete.

Homunculus arguments are common in the theory of vision. Imagine a person watching a movie. They see the images as something separate from themself, projected on the screen. How is this done? A simple theory might propose that the light from the screen forms an image on the retinae in the eyes and something in the brain looks at these as if they are the screen. The Homunculus Argument shows this is not a full explanation because all that has been done is to place an entire person, or homunculus, behind the eye who gazes at the retinae. A more sophisticated argument might propose that the images on the retinae are transferred to the visual cortex where it is scanned. Again this cannot be a full explanation because all that has been done is to place a little person in the brain behind the cortex. In the theory of vision the Homunculus Argument invalidates theories that do not explain 'projection', the experience that the viewing point is separate from the things that are seen (adapted from Gregory, 1987; 1990).

How a homunculus theory of mind argument might be visualised

"According to the legend, whenever an agent does anything intelligently, his act is preceded and steered by another internal act of considering a regulative proposition appropriate to his practical problem. . . . Must we then say that for the agent's . . . reflections how to act to be intelligent he must first reflect how best to reflect how to act? The endlessness of this implied regress shows that the application of the appropriateness does not entail the occurrence of a process of considering this criterion." Ryle 1949.

Ryle's theory is that intelligent acts cannot be a property of an inner being or mind, if such a thing were to exist.

John Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment, in which he likens a computer translating Chinese into English to a man in a room swapping symbols without truly understanding what the symbols mean, is an example of the use of a homunculus to explain a concept in the philosophy of mind.

The homunculus argument and the regress argument are often considered to be the same but this is not the case. The homunculus argument says that if there is a need for a 'little man' to complete a theory then the theory is false or incomplete. The regress argument says that an intelligent agent would need to think before it could have a thought.

[edit] Early literary representations

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Homunculi can be found in centuries worth of literature.

• One of the very earliest literary references to the homunculus which also hints of its origination occurs in Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (1643) in which the author states-

I am not of Paracelsus minde that boldly delivers a receipt to make a man without conjunction. ..., (Part 1:36)

19th century engraving of Goethe's Faust and Homunculus

• The alchemical connection also occurs in the German playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's rendition of Faust, Part 2 which has that famed sorcerer's former student, Wagner, create a homunculus, who then carries out extended conversations with Mephistopheles as well as travels with him to the Pharsalian Fields to save Faust.

• In his source study of Englishwoman Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, Prof. Radu Florescu notes that her father, William Godwin, and her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley were both quite familiar with the lives and works of alchemists like Paracelsus and others. Florescu also suggests that Johann Conrad Dippel, an alchemist born in Castle Frankenstein whom he believes may have been the inspiration for Dr. Frankenstein, was a student of Dr. David Christianus.

• In Laurence Sterne´s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Volume I, Chapter II , there is a reference to the homunculus: "(...) the animal spirits, whose business it was to have escorted and gone hand-in-hand with the homunculus, and conducted him safe to the place destined for his reception."

• Writing on the purely superficial westernization of Russian intellectuals in his travel journalism Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, Dostoevsky writes: 'There is no soil, we say, and no people, nationality is nothing but a certain system of taxation, the soul is a tabula rasa, a small piece of wax out of which you can readily mould a real man, a world man or a homunculus – all that must be done is to apply the fruits of European civilisation and read two or three books’

[edit] Miscellaneous uses of the term "Homunculus"

• The Homunculus appears occasionally in the folklore of Eastern Europe as a construct made from natural materials such as dirt, roots, insects, feces, and other substances. In these stories the creature is revived through incantation and acts as a vehicle for the astrally projected mind of a sorcerer.

• Laurie Schneider Adams, in "A History of Western Art", makes several references to a practice in the Middle Ages of depicting Christ as a homunculus. She states, "This depiction of Christ as a child-man, partly a reference to his miraculous nature, is a convention of Christian art before 1300". It is speculative, but Romanesque artists, often sculptors, may have been translating the infant Jesus in this way out of respect for his Divine nature, as a metaphor for his Divinity. Similarly, though stylistically very different, Michelangelo depicts David, the giant slayer, as a giant.

[edit] See also

• Cartesian theater
• Doppelgänger
• Golem
• Mind-body dichotomy
• Nobody
• Soul
• Tulpa

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Weiss JR, Burgess JB, Kaplan KJ. Fetiform teratoma (homunculus). Arch Pathol Lab Med 2006;130(10):1552-1556.
• Watson JD, Berry A. DNA: The Secret of Life. New York, NY: Random House; 2003.
• Abbott TM, Hermann WJ, Scully RE. Ovarian fetiform teratoma (homunculus) in a 9-year-old girl. Int J Gynecol Pathol 1984;2:392–402.
• Kuno N, Kadomatsu K, Nakamura M, Miwa-Fukuchi T, Hirabayashi N, Ishizuka T. Mature ovarian cystic teratoma with a highly differentiated homunculus: a case report. Birth Defects Res A Clin Mol Teratol 2004;70:40–46.
• Florescu, Radu (1975). In Search of Frankenstein. Boston: New York Graphic Society. ISBN 0-8212-0614-1. 
• Gregory, Richard L. (1990). Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing (4th ed. ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02456-1. 
• Gregory, Richard L. (ed.) (1987). The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-866124-X. 
• Maconius, S. (1980). The Lore of the Homunculus. Red Lion Publications. 
• Ryle, Gilbert (1984) [1949]. The Concept of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-73295-9. 
• Waite, Arthur Edward (ed.) (1976) [1894]. The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombast, of Hohenheim, Called Paracelsus the Great (2 vols. ed.). Berkeley: Shambhala. ISBN 0-87773-082-2.