Homunculus
A homunculus (UK: /hɒˈmʌŋkjʊləs/ hom-UNK-yuul-əs, US: /hoʊˈ-/ hohm-, Latin: [hɔˈmʊŋkʊlʊs]; "little person", pl.: homunculi UK: /hɒˈmʌŋkjʊliː/ hom-UNK-yuul-ee, US: /hoʊˈ-/ hohm-, Latin: [hɔˈmʊŋkʊli]) is a small human being.[1] Popularized in sixteenth-century alchemy and nineteenth-century fiction, it has historically referred to the creation of a miniature, fully formed human. The concept has roots in preformationism as well as earlier folklore and alchemic traditions.
The term lends its name to the cortical homunculus, an image of a person with the size of the body parts distorted to represent how much area of the cerebral cortex of the brain is devoted to it.
History
Alchemy
During medieval and early modern times, it was thought that homunculus, an artificial humanlike being, could be created through alchemy.
That the sperm of a man be putrefied by itself in a sealed cucurbit for forty days with the highest degree of putrefaction in a horse's womb ["venter equinus", meaning "warm, fermenting horse dung"[2]], or at least so long that it comes to life and moves itself, and stirs, which is easily observed. After this time, it will look somewhat like a man, but transparent, without a body. If, after this, it be fed wisely with the Arcanum of human blood, and be nourished for up to forty weeks, and be kept in the even heat of the horse's womb, a living human child grows therefrom, with all its members like another child, which is born of a woman, but much smaller.[3]: 328–329
The fully grown homunculus was supposedly greatly skilled in "art" and can create giants, dwarves, and other marvels, as "Through art they are born, and therefore art is embodied and inborn in them, and they need learn it from no one."[4]
Comparisons have been made with several similar concepts in the writings of earlier alchemists. Although the actual word "homunculus" was never used,
In
The homunculus continued to appear in alchemical writings after Paracelsus' time. The
In 1775, Count Johann Ferdinand von Kufstein, together with Abbé Geloni, an Italian cleric, is reputed to have created ten homunculi with the ability to foresee the future, which von Kufstein kept in glass containers at his Masonic lodge in Vienna. Dr. Emil Besetzny's Masonic handbook, Die Sphinx, devoted an entire chapter to the wahrsagenden Geister (scrying ghosts). These are reputed to have been seen by several people, including local dignitaries.[7][8]: 306
Folklore
References to the homunculus do not appear prior to sixteenth-century alchemical writings[citation needed] but alchemists may have been influenced by earlier folk traditions. The mandragora, known in German as Alreona, Alraun or Alraune is one example; Jean-Baptiste Pitois's The History and Practice of Magic makes a direct comparison to the mandragora in one excerpt:
Would you like to make a Mandragora, as powerful as the homunculus (little man in a bottle) so praised by Paracelsus? Then find a root of the plant called bryony. Take it out of the ground on a Monday (the day of the moon), a little time after the vernal equinox. Cut off the ends of the root and bury it at night in some country churchyard in a dead man's grave. For 30 days, water it with cow's milk in which three bats have been drowned. When the 31st day arrives, take out the root in the middle of the night and dry it in an oven heated with branches of verbena; then wrap it up in a piece of a dead man's winding-sheet and carry it with you everywhere.[9]
The homunculus has also been compared to the golem of Jewish folklore. Though the specifics outlining the creation of the golem and homunculus are very different, the concepts both metaphorically relate man to the divine, in his construction of life in his own image.[10]
Preformationism
Preformationism is the formerly popular theory that animals developed from miniature versions of themselves. Sperm were believed to contain complete preformed individuals called "
Terminological use in modern science
The homunculus is commonly used today in scientific disciplines such as
In medical science, the term homunculus is sometimes applied to certain fetus-like ovarian cystic teratomae. These will sometimes contain hair, sebaceous material and in some cases cartilaginous or bony structures.[14]
In a recent article published in the peer reviewed journal Leonardo "The Missing Female Homunculus”[15] by Haven Wright and Preston Foerder revisits the history of the Homunculus, sheds light on current research in neuroscience on the female brain, and reveals what they believe to be the first sculpture of the female Homunculus, done by the artist and first author Haven Wright, based on the current research available.
In popular culture
Early literature
Homunculi can be found in centuries worth of literature. These fictions are primarily centred around imaginative speculations on the quest for artificial life associated with Paracelsian alchemy. One of the very earliest literary references 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, ...[16]
The fable of the alchemically-created homunculus may have been central in Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818). Professor Radu Florescu suggests that Johann Konrad Dippel, an alchemist born in Castle Frankenstein, might have been the inspiration for Victor Frankenstein. German playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part Two (1832) famously features an alchemically-created homunculus.[17] Here, the character of Homunculus embodies the quest of a pure spirit to be born into a mortal form, contrasting Faust's desire to shed his mortal body to become pure spirit. The alchemical idea that the soul is not imprisoned in the body, but instead may find its brightest state as it passes through the material plane, is central to the character.[18] William Makepeace Thackeray wrote under the pen name of Homunculus.[19]
Contemporary literature
The homunculus legend, Frankenstein and Faust have continued to influence works in the twentieth and twenty-first century. The theme has been used not only in
Other media
Homunculi appear in fantasy based television, film, and games in a manner consistent with literature. Examples can be found in numerous mediums, such as the podcast
See also
- Cartesian theater
- Doppelgänger
- Fastachee
- Galatea, a mythical living sculpture made by Pygmalion
- Golem
- Homunculus argument
- Karzełek
- Mind–body dichotomy
- Nuno
- Simulacrum
- Snugglepot and Cuddlepie
- Soul
- Takwin
- Telesphorus (mythology)
- Tulpa
- Human cloning
Notes
- ^ a b "homunculus". Britannica. Retrieved 3 February 2024.
- ISBN 978-0-226-57524-7.
- ^ a b Grafton, Anthony (1999). Natural Particulars: Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe. MIT Press.
- ISBN 978-0-19-511725-7, retrieved 2023-07-28
- ^ a b Jung, Carl (1967). Alchemical Studies.
- ISBN 9780521085731.
- ^ Besetzny, Emil. (1873). Die Sphinx, pp. 111–157. Vienna.
- ^ Hartmann, Franz (1896). The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim: Known by the Name of Paracelsus, and the Substance of His Teachings. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner. p. 306.
- ^ pp. 402–403, by Paul Christian. 1963
- ^ Campbell, Mary Baine. "Artificial Men: Alchemy, Transubstantiation, and the Homunculus". Republics of Letters: A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts. 1 (2). Archived from the original on 2019-10-22. Retrieved 2013-01-17.
- ^ "Epigenesis and Preformationism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. October 11, 2005.
- ^ Saladin, Kenneth (2012). Anatomy and Physiology: The Unity of Form and Function, 6th Edition. McGraw-Hill.
- ^ "BrainConnection.com - The Anatomy of Movement". Brainconnection.positscience.com. Archived from the original on 2012-07-26. Retrieved 2012-01-29.
- PMID 14676454.
- S2CID 227275778.
- ^ Thomas Browne. Religio Medici. 1643. Part 1: 35
- ^ See Poet lore; a quarterly of world literature 1889 p. 269ff A Faust Problem: What was the Homunculus? and Faust by Goethe Faust p. 350ff
- JSTOR 2907086.
- ^ John Bull and his wonderful lamp: a new reading of an old tale by Homunculus.
- hdl:1959.14/76602.
- ISBN 9784864728799.
Further reading
- Montiel, L (2013). "Proles sine matre creata: The Promethean Urge in the History of the Human Body in the West". Asclepio. 65 (1): 1–11. .
- Weiss, JR; Burgess, JB; Kaplan, KJ (2006). "Fetiform teratoma (homunculus)". Arch Pathol Lab Med. 130 (10): 1552–1556. PMID 17090201.
- Watson JD, Berry A. DNA: The Secret of Life. New York, New York: Random House; 2003.
- Abbott, TM; Hermann, WJ; Scully, RE (1984). "Ovarian fetiform teratoma (homunculus) in a 9-year-old girl". Int J Gynecol Pathol. 2 (4): 392–402. PMID 6724790.
- Kuno, N; Kadomatsu, K; Nakamura, M; Miwa-Fukuchi, T; Hirabayashi, N; Ishizuka, T (2004). "Mature ovarian cystic teratoma with a highly differentiated homunculus: a case report". Birth Defects Research Part A: Clinical and Molecular Teratology. 70 (1): 40–46. PMID 14745894.
- ISBN 0-8212-0614-1.
- 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.
- ISBN 0-226-73295-9.
- ISBN 0-87773-082-2.
External links
- Media related to Homunculus at Wikimedia Commons
- Homunculus article from The Mystica.