Talk:Homunculus

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Initial text[edit]

It's not clear from the text whether in describing the homunculus as a "little man", "man" is being used generically (i.e. "human"), or to refer specifically to a male. Presumably the author intended the former, or else the homunculus theory of conception would not explain where women came from! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.33.43.145 (talk) 21:20, 14 March 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Frankenstein[edit]

Does Frankenstein's monster count as a Homunculus? In Animamundi the Homunculi was made from bits & pieces of corpses with a secret ingredient to bring it to life. That sounds like Frankenstein to me.

Homunculi in philosophy of mind[edit]

Simply asserting that homunculi don't exist is highly misleading, especially when you consider the "sub-homunculi" as first postulated by Daniel Dennett in 1978. He elaborated on this in his 1991 work Consciousness Explained when he stated, "...theories that posit such homunculi ("little men" in the brain) are not always to be shunned, but whenever homunculi are rung in to help, they had better be relatively stupid functionaries..." (emphasis added). Also, in an interview for the book States of Mind he wrote,

"The fundamental homunculus objection, which has been around for a long time, foresees an infinite regress~. If the little man in your head looking at the little screen is using the full powers of human vision, then we have to look at the even smaller man in his head looking at a still smaller screen, and so on ad infinitum. That's what's wrong with the little man in the head. However, if you make a simple step, if you break that little man down into a committee of specialists, each of which does less than the full job, has less than the full competence you are trying to explain, now you face the prospect of a finite regress that will bottom out in something purely mechanical. We start with specialist homunculi, no one of which has the full mentality we are trying to explain, and we gradually break these down into simpler functional units, which only by courtesy are called homunculi, and finally we get down to things that are so simple you could replace them with a machine i.e. with a neuron, or a flip-flop in a computer that only has to remember 0 or 1 as its only expertise." 69.182.52.15 (talk) 02:48, 30 December 2012 (UTC)IP[reply]

69.182.52.15 (talk) 02:48, 30 December 2012 (UTC)Dennet is misleading here. The fundamental objection to homunculi in philosophy is not that it is an infinite regress, but that it is a historical circular regress. “This is the same as that, only different.”, ad infinitum. A homunculi, even defined by Dennet, is a passenger talking to the driver to give directions. It could be a committee, though inaction, chaos and confusion would reign, as with all committees, a consensus decision is harder to reach. I prefer a homunculus free philosophy. The Psyche, or, personal integrity, can always choose to not react to history. Developing a standard of personal integrity demands any homunucli to remain a secondary rider, and not give it more attention than the choices you have made to meet your goals. A homunculi doesn’t require any attention at all since it is only there for the ride.It goes where you go. Choose a path, and, if you still claim to have homunculi, it will still be there. If you don’t have a homunculi, it won’t be missed.69.182.52.15 (talk) 02:48, 30 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thus, even if only "out of courtesy," such neuronal functionaries deserve to be mentioned under the heading of Homunculi (and they obviously exist).

Also, the philospher John R. Searle has written an essay entitled, "Is the Brain a Digital Computer?", the fifth section of which is: "Second Difficulty: The Homunculus Fallacy is Endemic to Cognitivism", which IMO is also relevant and at odds with what Dennett has written. Dennett thinks we can abolish the Homunculus fallacy by breaking down the one "homunculus" into "sub-homunculi" (i.e., an army of stupid functionaries); Searle disagrees and finds that the matter is not so simple--that, in fact, the attempt to abolish homunculi necessarily fails, since to embrace cognitivist theories is to necessarily embrace a homunculus (in the full sense), even if one doesn't want to. Thus, when a wikipedia author writes, "After all, homunculi do not exist," this should be changed to: "After all, infinite regresses do not exist." Let me stress that it is the necessary entailment of an infinite regress which renders the Homunculus Argument a fallacy and NOT the fact that the argument invokes homunculi. (And another thing--the section entitled "The homunculus argument in the philosophy of mind" needs to be massively rewritten. It contains some of the poorest writing I've ever seen on Wikipedia (the Ryle quote is not even correct, it is wordy and rambling, some statements are false and some are downright misleading even when true, and it is almost unintelligible at some points, etc.). I'll be rewriting it shortly, just as I expanded the Ryle's Regress page, but I hereby am alerting all others that it is far from even adequate--and so I think you should help too.) --Uroshnor 08:13, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I realize it is a long quote, but it just occurred to me while rereading the Searle article how brilliantly Searle treats of the issues. As such, I've decided to reproduce it here for all concerned (after all, it is only four paragraphs):

"It took me a long time to figure out what these people were driving at, so in case someone else is similarly puzzled I will explain an example in detail: Suppose that we have a computer that multiplies six times eight to get forty-eight. Now we ask 'How does it do it?' Well, the answer might be that it adds six to itself seven times. But if you ask 'How does it add six to itself seven times?', the answer might be that, first, it converts all of the numerals into binary notation, and second, it applies a simple algorithm for operating on binary notation until finally we reach the bottom level at which the only instructions are of the form, 'Print a zero, erase a one.' So, for example, at the top level our intelligent homunculus says 'I know how to multiply six times eight to get forty-eight'. But at the next lower-level he is replaced by a stupider homunculus who says 'I do not actually know how to do multiplication, but I can do addition.' Below him are some stupider ones who say 'We do not actually know how to do addition or multiplication, but we know how to convert decimal to binary.' Below these are stupider ones who say 'We do not know anything about any of this stuff, but we know how to operate on binary symbols.' At the bottom level are a whole bunch of a homunculi who just say 'Zero one, zero one'. All of the higher levels reduce to this bottom level. Only the bottom level really exists; the top levels are all just as-if.
Various authors (e.g. Haugeland (1981), Block (1990)) describe this feature when they say that the system is a syntactical engine driving a semantic engine. But we still must face the question we had before: What facts intrinsic to the system make it syntactical? What facts about the bottom level or any other level make these operations into zeros and ones? Without a homunculus that stands outside the recursive decomposition, we do not even have a syntax to operate with (emphasis in original). The attempt to eliminate the homunculus fallacy through recursive decomposition fails, because the only way to get the syntax intrinsic to the physics is to put a homunculus in the physics.
There is a fascinating feature to all of this. Cognitivists cheerfully concede that the higher levels of computation, e.g. 'multiply 6 times 8' are observer relative; there is nothing really there that corresponds directly to multiplication; it is all in the eye of the homunculus/beholder. But they want to stop this concession at the the lower levels. The electronic circuit, they admit, does not really multiply 6X8 as such, but it really does manipulate 0's and 1's and these manipulations, so to speak, add up to multiplication. But to concede that the higher levels of computation are not intrinsic to the physics is already to concede that the lower levels are not intrinsic either. So the homunculus fallacy is still with us (emphasis added).
For real computers of the kind you buy in the store, there is no homunculus problem, each user is the homunculus in question. But if we are to suppose that the brain is a digital computer, we are still faced with the question 'And who is the user?' Typical homunculus questions in cognitive science are such as the following: 'How does the visual system compute shape from shading; how does it compute object distance from size of retinal image?' A parallel question would be, 'How do nails compute the distance they are to travel in the board from the impact of the hammer and the density of the wood?' And the answer is the same in both sorts of case: If we are talking about how the system works intrinsically neither nails nor visual systems compute anything. We as outside homunculi might describe them computationally, and it is often useful to do so. But you do not understand hammering by supposing that nails are somehow intrinsically implementing hammering algorithms and you do not understand vision by supposing the system is implementing, e.g, the shape from shading alogorithm."

In light of Searle's critique of Dennett's argument (which I agree with), IMHO the proper means of avoiding the Homunculus Fallacy is to avoid cognitivism implicitly by embracing Behaviorism. The Homunculus Fallacy is endemic to cognitivism not Behaviorism. B.F. Skinner was correct when, in his 1974 work About Behaviorism, he stated, "Behavior is the achievement of a person, and we seem to deprive the human organism of something which is his natural due when we point instead to the environmental sources of his behavior. We do not dehumanize him; we dehomunculize him" (i.e., we take the ‘inner man’ out, or show that by no means do we even need to take a homunculus into account in the first place). Behaviorists focus exclusively on the functional laws of behavior (with behavior as the dependent variable); their theories implicitly reject an inner determining agent and knowledge of any inner states (the latter of which we rarely, as scientists, have available to us anyway). This is how we abolish the Homunculus Fallacy, which is otherwise endemic. --Uroshnor 09:46, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The basic, regress problem of theories of mind was formulated by Aristotle in "On the soul". Please widen your reading before you "correct" this article. loxley 14:57, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
You quote "Behaviorist ... theories implicitly reject ... inner states". Viewing this from a computer programming vantage point, it seems obvious the humans are stateful and not stateless objects. Makes no sense to me. [1]( Martin | talk • contribs 20:44, 29 June 2010 (UTC))[reply]

And I am going to make sure that no one overlooks the disease connotations of the word 'endemic' by bringing it up now. --Uroshnor 09:56, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

For the record, I am aware that this is hardly a forum for the expression of personal views, so it wasn't exactly relevant to inform everyone what I do and do not agree with. However, I believe a truly complete and proper encyclopedic entry for the Homunculus Argument (Fallacy) would hardly be complete or proper if it failed to include a detailed treatment of how Behaviorist theories dehomunculize human beings. As I noted on the Ryle's Regress page, in The Concept of Mind, Ryle was writing from a logical behaviorist standpoint. It is from this fertile ground that the Homunculus Fallacy springs. As such, I believe the page must emphasize its Behaviorial origin and kinship with other Behavioral critiques of cognitivism. Otherwise it is not an encyclopedia entry at all; for instance in its current incarnation I would liken it to an apologia for the Mentalistic stance of most psychologists. --Uroshnor 08:37, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Be very wary here, the regress argument is a modification of "epistemological regress" which is regression before the event (to think of a thing you must think of thinking of a thing). The homunculus argument is a less sound, intuitive argument about recursion after the event (the homunculus sees the brain of an homunculus which sees the brain of an homunculus - its homunculi all the way down!). loxley 15:02, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Removed the original research tag. I heard Gregory mention the fallacy of confusing the homunculus argument with the regress argument in a lecture about 30 years ago! They are obviously different and it is good that Wikipedia is differentiating between them.

What you say about the homunculus and regress arguments is correct, they are different BUT the article does contain some speculation although possibly not quite the speculation mentioned by Uroshnor. I have removed the speculative paragraph. Robinhw 16:47, 11 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The use of a homunculus is inserted into psychological discourse in order to deny the physical origen of thought and decision making. If the source is entirely physical, then there are philosophical and religious implications, regarding responsibility. There is also the element of vanity, in that many persons do not want to see themselves as machines, but as spiritual beings, with the spiritual element being responsible for decision making.

As for infinite regress, a can of Pet Milk used to have a picture on it of a can of Pet Milk, with a cow's head sticking out of one end. One the side of that can was another pictures of a can of Pet milk, on which was another picture, etc., ad infinitum.

Where does the homunculus get its thought? Either it appears from nowhere, or it in turn has its own humunculus, which itself has another homunculus, which also has... etc., ad infinitum.

The can example is wrong because the artist gets fed up after two or three generations of cans. Mirrors are a better example, by arranging two mirrors appropriately you can get hundreds of repeated reflections. But this isn't the regress argument, regress occurs through time, it is endless processing not just a complicated pattern in space. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.11.127.112 (talk) 11:03, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In the homunculus fallacy the homunculus is the property of a person that you are trying to explain. The homunculus argument points out that if a theory that hopes to explain a property of a person requires this property as an explanation then the theory is fallacious (obviously). Descartes tried to explain human vision where lots of things can be seen simultaneously by two separate eyes as if from a point. Suppose Descartes had actually suggested that mind is due to a flow of information from the "common sense" to a soul that is a geometric point. Had he done this we could argue that all he had done was to transfer the problem of vision into the soul where a person (spirit) would be needed to see the information. Descartes would have been guilty of the homunculus fallacy (in fact he was too clever to be caught out so easily).
School kids who have never heard of binocular rivalry and the physical and physiological problems of perception often assume that we have a single point eye that sees billions of photons funnelling into it as the world. The point eye would, of course, need a homunculus behind it. Some philosophers attack this problem by suggesting that you do not actually see things simultaneously and hence avoid the need to explain how the brain can contain a visual "space" (ie: many things at once) with a viewing point that is separate. Robinhw 20:49, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I edited the statement about John Searle's Chinese Room because its relevance to the homunculus argument (rather than merely homunculus) seemed to me unclear.

Nethack[edit]

Along with the rest of the videogames listed, Homunculi are monsters in Nethack (aggressive to you by default if you're non-chaotic), which is at least as notable as a Diablo2 expansion pack. The help page on them reads,

A homunculus is a creature summoned by a mage to perform some particular task. They are particularly good at spying. They are smallish creatures, but very agile. They can put their victims to sleep with a venomous bite, but due to their size, the effect does not last long on humans.
"Tothapis cut him off. 'Be still and hearken. You will travel aboard the sacred wingboat. Of it you may not have heard; but it will bear you thither in a night and a day and a night. With you will go a homunculus that can relay your words to me, and mine to you, across the leagues between at the speed of thought.'"
- Conan the Rebel, by Poul Anderson

--128.143.167.95 28 June 2005 21:12 (UTC)

Sadly, all this text was way to much for me to read ;) But I saw small parts of it, and let me just say, the human brain is in no way comparible to a digital computer. No way. The human brain uses quantum effects to get its caluculations, which can't be proparly simulated on a digital computer. You need quantum computers for that. --Soyweiser 29 June 2005 20:05 (UTC)

do you have a source for this? First, what does the brain do that needs quantum effects (I once heard a lecture where someone kept waving his hands and saying "microtubules", if that is what you mean)? Second, where do you get this idea that digital computers cannot simulate quantum effects? afaik, the quantum computer is a turing machine like any other, just faster
Well, quantum computers can solve cryptography problems that normal computers can't solve. In a way quantum computers are said to be super-turing (see: Super-Turing_computation). The quantum computer ain't a very fast normal computer, in theory it can do more. If we can ever harness this theoretical power remains to be seen. Don't know about the microtubules. But the processing of the signals going into the brain that regulates the eyes are said to use quantum effects. And the human brain is in a way analog system, it works constant, a computer is discrete, it only works for short moments, this was recently shown in some research (which I sadly can't find at the moment sorry). See for analog computers.--Soyweiser 19:57, 27 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
That's not accurate. Some NP-hard problems are in QBPP. That is to say, a quantum computer can, with bounded probability of success, solve in polynomial time some problems that are believed to be impossible to solve in polynomial time on a classical computer.
As far as I know, the extent to which quantum effects have an impact the brain (and in turn, the extent to which our brains are goverened by probability rather than determinism) is still unknown. Matt Powell 05:48, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Source for this: https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Homunculus
-- 80.187.109.58 (talk) 03:35, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To add to my description of the Homonculus in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, The soul of the homonculus (a bullet soul) lets you summon a small, grayish, humanoid type creature which walks along the ground and does damage to other monsters it may touch. It also has a little antenna and one eye. The fact that it is so little reffers back to the idea that Homonculus means "Little man". --Ajici Otaro 20:26, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Adding link to "Cortical Homunculus" if noone minds. Within the realm of psychology/neurology/biology this is not the philosophical homunculus in the experimental and behaviorist debate but a useful concept image for understanding how the body and brain connect on the more superficial level of movement and senses. --Jgrant 04:20, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]


      • i think it might be adventagious to split this article into two separate ones. one on the folkloric/alchemical homunculus and one on the modern philosophical/scientific concept. Or at least give equal time to both. Currently the focus seems to be on the latter. as evidenced by the link to philosophy of thought at the bottom.


Added a bit about a japanese graphic novel titled Homunculus, it's about an eccentric analyst who underwent a trepanation procedure which left him seeing things he otherwise could not see. Anyone who is interested in weird comics should definitely check this one out.68.163.103.9 03:57, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I hate to sound whiney, because I have nothing to contribute, but this has to be the article with the most confusing introduction ever. I think what needs to be done is to add a "Legend" section at the top, similar to the one found in Alraune so people understand that the concept of a homunculus is twofold, one as a representative of mental and bodily functions, and the other as alchemic nonsense. --copperheadclgp 10:25, 2 March 2006


Where exactly does the citation from Dr. David Christianus come from? I have found a large number of references to his method on the internet, however I have been unable to find the name of the book from which this method comes. Furthermore, the online library catalogue at the University of Giessen reveals no documents authored by him, nor does that of Yale University. I have also checked google scholar and the library of the University of Pittsburgh, and yet there is no trace of Dr David Christianus.

Another reference[edit]

The creation of Homunculus is a rather important part of the plot of Animamundi: Dark Alchemist, and it seemed to use a rather simplified verison of the first method described in the wiki.

Wolf's Rain?[edit]

In the Anime series Wolf's Rain (I don't know about the manga), the main character "Cheza" the "Flower Maiden" is said to be created from lost scientific and alchemical knowledge. Considering she's 'made from a lunar flower', would this qualify her for homunculus status?--65.188.55.90 05:38, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Homunculi in Art[edit]

What about the homunculus in art? In art, a homunculus was a small human; that is to say, a human who has all the proportions of a full grown man with the only difference being in size. Baby Jesus was often depicted as a homunculus in paintings and drawings made before the Renaissance period.

However, I haven't been able to find any examples yet-- my friend and I couldn't believe they didn't have any at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Also, since Jesus is the only example I really know of homunculi in art, I'm not sure whether "little man" could be read as either gender or not. ^^;

Spiffy 07:16, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Homunculus Creation?[edit]

The whole final paragraph of homunculus of alchemy seems ridiculous, and is full of grammatical errors. Should be allowed to stay as an example of 'what some believe' or just deleted?138.253.160.174 12:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Removal of commercial text[edit]

I removed the entire 21st century literary representations section. It contained the following:

  • The first 21st century literary representation of homunculi may be found in Hugh Paxton's horror/action novel "Homunculus" (first published in hardback ISBN 978-0230000490 by Macmillan UK in October 2006 and now available in paperback (March 2007), ISBN 978-0230007369). Hugh Paxton's novel features the homunculus as a frightful bio-weapon created and tested to ghastly effect in the crucible of war-torn Sierra Leone. Hugh Paxton's homunculi are a synthesis of the medieval and modern; alchemy harnessed and auctioned to provide strategic psychological warfare, assassination and area denial services. The homunculi are portrayed as grotesque bio-robot warriors, composed of human body parts and powered by moonshine. In addition to conventional weapons handling, they can also detonate as "suicide bombs".
  • These homunculi are capable of cannibalising their victims to conduct self repair and also to create more homunculi and so they rapidly accumulate biohazzardous pathogens from their victims. Many homunculi are infected with the Ebola Virus and Human Imunodefficiency Virus (HIV). This makes the little horrors doubly dangerous.
  • The homunculus website (URL http://www.homunculus.us/) contains more information about the novel and also associated media, including "Homunculus- the song" - a Frankenstein creation of volunteers' voices combined with royalty-free sound clips.
  • The Homunculus cartoon cover illustration was created by Namibian artist, Dudley Vine. Dudley drew upon his own traumatic experience of warfare to create his depiction of a homunculus.

This reads like a blatant advertisement. And it isn't true either, since Jane R Goodall's 2004 novel The Walkers predates Paxton's by two years. I removed it, and added a mention of the Paxton book to the 20th century literary representations section, which I renamed to Contemporary literary representations. --Radioflux 13:48, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Once Upon a Time... Life[edit]

The TV series Once Upon a Time... Life, explains human body using anthropomorphic red and white blood cells, neurotransmitters or even spermatozoa. How about agree it under the TV section?85.55.129.16 22:44, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Film and Pop Culture[edit]

This section needs to be sorted better. -Sox207 18:43, 17 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Kammerer[edit]

See the link in French for an early use of the homunculus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:53, 22 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Introduction[edit]

The bulk of the article's introduction was about Charles Darwin's support of pangenesis. Although interesting, it was misleading since neither Darwin nor pangenesis were mentioned again and no direct connection to the article subject was made.

I really did find this one of the most confusing introductions I have seen in a Wikipedia article, so I tightened things up by removing the paragraph. I hope I didn't overstep. Being bold here. 71.198.202.79 15:27, 5 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No homunculus in spermist theory[edit]

The section "Homunculus of Spermists" contains some well-known, but still completely wrong assertions. (1) Most importantly, the term homunculus carefully never was used by spermists, as its association with Paracelsus and alchemy was poisonous [2]. They only called them animalcules. (2) Spermism was one of two camps of preformationism, the other being ovism, of which you hear little. Ovists, like Theodor Kerckring, drew little preformed people as wel, but then in eggs [3]. Preformationism, ovism, and animalcules all predate the discovery of semen by many years, and so does the "reductio ad absurdum" mentioned in the text. (3) The first drawing of an animalcule in a sperm was made by Dalenpatius, a French aristocrate. Leeuwenhoek "himself was, at first, rather suspicious about these miniatures with hats and tails;" and claimed "in a certain book it is laid to my charge that I proclaimed that a human being will originate from an animalcule in the sperm, although I have on the contrary never expressed an opinion on this subject". Willing or not, Leeuwenhoek got associated with spermism, which was developed by Joseph de Aromatari, and then Marcello Malpighi and Jan Swammerdam before Hartsoeker made his drawing in 1694. (4) Nicolaas Hartsoeker never claimed to have seen these animalcules, but simply postulated their existence as part of the spermist theory.

These errors are spread all over textbooks and in wikipedia, so it will take some undoing. Afasmit (talk) 22:44, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

homo=human being[edit]

Homo doesn't mean human being, it means man. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Saturn orfeo (talk • contribs) 00:04, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Not so: "vir" is "man"— we are talking Latin here, and the word "homo" suffers from the same ambiguities in Latin as it does in modern English (i.e., it can mean both "man" as a gendered person as well as "human" or non-gender-specific member of the human species, depending on context). But if you want to say "man" in Latin, and you mean a person with one X and one Y chromosome, you say "vir", not "homo"... KDS4444Talk 04:28, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

other instances[edit]

surely the use of them in the babylon 5 spin off "crusade" by the technomages should be mentioned. and the use of them by the dark eldar in warhammer 40,000 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.106.70.5 (talk) 23:06, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

McCain Citation[edit]

I checked the cited source (5) and there is no mention of "the head homunculus" in the article. Thus, the entry is a fabrication and a fraud and I am removing it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.8.89.15 (talk) 19:49, 16 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What exactly counts as a homunculus[edit]

Would a halfling from D&D be counted as one, or would it have to be smaller? Livingston 10:57, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • You don't seem to have gotten the point of the article. No, there is no sense in which a halfling could be considered a homunculus. KDS4444Talk 04:30, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Jabir ibn Hayyan was not an Ismaili[edit]

I have replaced the erroneous "Ismaili" reference for Jabir ibn Hayyan with "Muslim". Jabir ibn Hayyan was a student of Ja`far al-Sadiq who was the father of Isma`il ibn Ja`far. Hence, he predates the very existence of Ismailism itself. Please see the Wikipedia entry for Jabir ibn Hayyan for confirmation of this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.46.207.189 (talk) 07:59, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The popular culture section is much too long and mostly trivia[edit]

Besides the length, this section mostly lists trivia. It needs to be made shorter and put in prose format explaining the significance the subject has had on popular culture while only listing a few notable examples.24.190.34.219 (talk) 07:00, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Opening paragraph[edit]

I feel that the opening paragraph is extremely nebulous. The first sentence is adequate since, homunculus does indeed have various meanings in various contexts and gives a more or less basic definition. But what does the following mean: "It is often used to illustrate the functioning of a system"? This is extremely vague and the context is not established. Is this referring to an organ system (as in biology) or systems theory or what? And why is it relevant (and what exactly does it mean) that a homunculus can be "viewed as an entity or agent" in the sense of an "unknowable prime actor"? This seems very jargon-laden for an introductory paragraph on the concept of something with as many different meanings as "homunculus." Wolfdog (talk) 14:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly! I was about to write the precise same thing. It bothers me somewhat, too. May those lines simply be deleted, then? Homunculus (strange tales) 12:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they may as well be deleted until someone can come up with some justification for having them there. Wolfdog (talk) 17:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Removed. Well done. Homunculus (strange tales) 12:46, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why the pop culture section?[edit]

There is a big tag message on it saying that the section is bad, and there shouldn't be lists of trivia. Why is it still there? I did not want to delete it out of courtesy, but what good is it serving? I would be quite willing to ignore all rules if someone could explain its purpose. Otherwise in a few days I'm going to delete it. Homunculus (duihua) 15:48, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Pop culture sections and articles are not "against the rules" of wikipedia. The problem is deciding what is "trivial" and what is not. It is perfectly acceptable to discuss the portrayals of a subject within the arts and media, but extensive lists of every book or tv show which mentions the word "homunculus" are not acceptable. The prudent thing would be to remove the truly trivial entries and keep the major ones (e.g., the mention of the word by a character on the "Big Bang Theory" tv show is a passing mention of the subject, while Mr Sin from "Dr Who" is a major portrayal of the subject). For more info, see WP:WikiProject Popular Culture. --ErgoSum•talk•trib 23:16, 24 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A useful explanation, thank you. I understand from your remark that the key is to identify the significant references in cultural productions and include those, cutting the rest. Homunculus (duihua) 01:10, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

re Searle: swapping symbols without truly understanding what the symbols mean[edit]

"truly" is an error. In Searle's set-up, the man in the room does not understand Chinese at all. If AI can be mechanized, it be done as manual labor. ( Martin | talk • contribs 20:50, 29 June 2010 (UTC))[reply]

re Searle: in which he likens a computer translating Chinese into English[edit]

This is also a mistake. Searle is not concerned with translation, nor is the Turing Test. Searle envisions a conversation between a Chinese speaker and a computer, and suggests replacing the computer with a literate laborer and the required books in the laborer's language. His assumption that the man could work as fast as the computer is not critical to the argument, nor is the assumption that the laborer speak English.

Does the elevator come because it realizes that we want to go up? You can't tell until the door opens and you can see. ( Martin | talk • contribs 20:49, 29 June 2010 (UTC))[reply]

== Trivia moved from Article to Talk == Does anyone have any knowledge of Homunculus being used in reference to an event where a small person was hidden in a box ( in the 1900 timeframe), and when people inserted questions into the box, the person in the box would reply with the answer, misleading the people into believing that it was an intelligent machine? Frankamaher

Early literary representations[edit]

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.
  • 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’

Contemporary literary representations[edit]

  • In the twentieth century Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, has several references to a homunculus, particularly detailed in a chapter dealing with druidic rites performed at a party in the country estate (castle) of a wealthy Rosicrucian. After a series of sensually stimulating occult acts are played out for the small audience, several homunculi appear to be created, but the main character, Casaubon, cannot decide if they are wax or indeed authentic magic.
  • German horror writer Hanns Heinz Ewers used the mandrake method for creating a homunculus as the inspiration for his 1911 novel Alraune, in which a prostitute is impregnated with semen from a hanged murderer to create a woman devoid of morals or conscience. Several cinematic adaptations of Alraune have been made over the years, the most recent in 1952 with Erich von Stroheim. The 1995 film Species also appears to draw some inspiration from this variation on the homunculus legend.
  • Dennis Wheatley's novel The Satanist Hutchinson 1960. As part of the plot a Satanist using Homunculi as part of his Occult ritual to create air breathing creatures. The Homunculi were created and stored in large fluid filled jars from a previous ritual. The ultimate transformation required a 21-year-old virgin to be sacrificed and her blood fed to the Homunculi. The virgin had previously been christened to Satan at birth by her father for occult favours and riches, unknown to herself.
  • In the young-adult fantasy book Rumo by German novelist and cartoonist Walter Moers, Homunculi are hybrid life forms created out of a giant viscous liquid containing various animal cells. They are used as cheap labour.
  • In English novelist Peter Ackroyd's novel The House of Doctor Dee, John Dee, the Elizabethan mathematician, astrologer, philosopher and magus, attempts and succeeds in creating a homunculus.
  • American author David H. Keller, M.D., wrote two pieces featuring homunculi. One was a short story, "A Twentieth-Century Homunculus", published in Amazing Stories in 1930, which describes the creation of homunculi on an industrial scale by a pair of misogynists. In the other, a novel called The Homunculus, published in 1949 by Prime Press of Philadelphia, retired Colonel Horatio Bumble creates such a being.
  • Also examining the misogynistic tendencies of the creators of homunculi, Swedish novelist Sven Delblanc lampoons both his homunculus' creator and the Cold War industrial-military complexes of the Soviet Union and NATO in his novel The Homunculus: A Magic Tale.
  • A homunculus called Twigleg is one of the main characters of the 1997 children's novel Dragon Rider by German author Cornelia Funke. This homunculus is created by combining artificial ingredients and a small living creature (probably a small insect or spider). He is also referred to as a "manikin".
  • In Jane R. Goodall's 2004 mystery novel The Walker (Hodder Headline ISBN 0-7336-1897-9), ancient secrets pertaining to the creation of the alchemical homunculus are central to a plot involving murders based on Hogarth's prints and set in "Swinging London". The creation of homunculi, together with the search for the philosopher's stone, was a central aim of alchemy. Implicit in the novel is the uneasy speculation that the original experiment succeeded and this evil being may indeed move through history.
  • In Sean Williams' Books of the Cataclysm one of the central characters is a homunculus containing the consciousnesses of the Mirror Twins Seth & Hadrian Callisto.
  • Micah Nathan's 2005 novel Gods of Aberdeen contains a scene where a mandrake root is pulled from the ground and the protagonist questions if it's being used to create a homunculus.
  • In Doctor Illuminatus (Alchemist's Son Trilogy) by Martin Booth, Pierre de Loudéac persists to create a homunculus and succeeds. Also mentioned in the sequel Soul Stealer. Martin Booth died before the trilogy was completed.
  • In Hugh Paxton's 2006 novel Homunculus (MacMillan New Writing ISBN 978-0230007369), alchemy is harnessed for modern military purposes. Homunculi created from human body parts and powered by moonshine are used as bioweapons in war-torn Sierra Leone.
  • In James P. Blaylock's novel Homunculus, published in 1986, a homunculus is much sought after by several of the book's characters because of its powerful magical abilities.

Film and pop culture[edit]

{{In popular culture|date=November 2009}} {{Multiple issues|section=November 2009|trivia=November 2009|prose=November 2009}}

Film, television and literature[edit]

  • In episode 3 "The Gothowitz Deviation" of the third season of The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon refers to Leonard as a homunculus.
  • The homunculus' likely first appearance in film was the six-part 1916 German serial Homunculus.
  • In the classic horror film Bride of Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein's old teacher, Dr. Praetorius, shows him his own creations, a series of miniature humanoids kept in specimen jars, including a bishop, a king, a queen, a ballerina, a mermaid, and a devil. These are clearly intended to be homunculi, based on those creatures described by Emil Besetzny's Sphinx, as translated and presented in Franz Hartmann's Life of Paracelsus.
  • In the 2006 book Keeper of the Waters, the second book in the Daughter of Destiny series, an enemy that the main character encounters is a homunculus.
  • In the American film The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974), the homunculus is portrayed as a miniature winged gargoyle creature who is the nemesis of Sinbad.
  • In the 2005 comedy film The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse a homunculus is created in a subplot called "The King's Evil."
  • Glen Phillips created a homunculus in the video for "Everything But You"
  • In the rare cult film Moonchild (1974), there is a homunculus who is a servant to a manager in a mission hotel.[1]
  • The supernatural thriller Ghost Road Blues by Jonathan Maberry features a homunculus as a servant of the vampire overlord Ubel Griswold.
  • In the remaining twenty-five episodes of The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, Ray Ray Lee (the main character Juniper's little brother) has his soul living in a homunculus body that looks exactly like him after his original body mutates into a massive creature.
  • In the novel If You're Reading This, It's Too Late by Pseudonymous Bosch, the main characters, Cass and Max-Ernest, pursue and eventually locate a homunculus.
  • In the anime and manga Fullmetal Alchemist, the antagonists are Homunculi named after the seven deadly sins, and their creator, whose identity differs between the manga and the first anime adaptation.
  • In the japanese tokusatsu series GoGo Sentai Boukenger, the Questers create a giant Homonculus, by placing three Precious into a special vessel.
  • In Cory Doctorow's Makers (Cory Doctorow novel), the Disney-In-A-Box prototype is staffed and operated by homunculi.[2] First appearance, Part 49.[3]
  • Mr Sin, from the 1977 episode The Talons of Weng-Chiang of the BBC series Doctor Who
  • In the anime series Buso Renkin, Homunculus are a type of alchemy that attack humans.

Miscellaneous uses of the term "Homunculus"[edit]

  • 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.
  • increasing use in planning/finance circles to describe a plan that is a stripped down, perfect case scenario, that is probably unrealistic [citation needed]

References

  1. ^ imdb.com - Moonchild (1974)
  2. ^ Doctorow, Cory (2009). Makers. Tor Press. ISBN 9780765312792.
  3. ^ tor.com

Trivia / other content[edit]

Howdy. Did a giant clean up of the pop culture trivia. Looks like before it was just deleted full-on, then reverted. I'm in the process of fixing up the content in relation to alchemy and will add more re: Paracelsus. Added folklore section to deal with some of the pre-Paracelsus threads.

What's up with the Homunculus argument section? No refs? I'm not sure if it belongs here at all as more than a hatnote or link. At most it should be a couple paragraphs to avoid branching, right?Car Henkel (talk) 14:01, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Gone ahead and removed this unref'd section. Added it to DAB page and See also section.Car Henkel (talk) 19:36, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Peter Lorenz[edit]

The Peter Lorenz who is the author of "Homunkuli" is different from the politician Peter Lorenz. Is there some way of clarifying this, without going through the work of making an entry for Peter Lorenz (author) and adding a header to the article for the politician? Please don't ask me to do this, I just spent half an hour searching the web to verify this, and this is the sum total of my knowledge of the subject. I'd just like to spare anyone else the same effort - and forestall the possibility that someone will decide to make a link here to the article on the politician. TomS TDotO (talk) 14:44, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Homunculus"[edit]

The usage and primary topic of " Homunculus " is under discussion, see Talk:Homunculus patagonicus -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 04:48, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Eastern European Homunculus?[edit]

So, this guy, from what I can assume to be Eastern Europe, stuck his own sperm in a chicken egg, here, and has done several experiments involving said creations. Would these be qualified as Homunculi, or are they not worthy of being mentioned here? 2601:195:4180:1843:C1E0:E6BF:1B8A:A33B (talk) 19:40, 26 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sorting out the ambiguities of Homunculus.. not off-topic but discourse too[edit]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) : 

 homunculus
     n 1: a person who is very small but who is not otherwise
          deformed or abnormal [syn: manikin, mannikin,
          homunculus]
     2: a tiny fully formed individual that (according to the
        discredited theory of preformation) is supposed to be present
        in the sperm cell

The definition is difficult to interpret, both since each definition doesn't clarify context obviously: aberrations in the Western Hemisphere grow laterally yet sparse. however, in 21st century homunculus represents and resembles pre-gothic development: for instance, there are grimoires, gargantuan(s), orcs, dwarves, and definitely lots of definitions in Western Europe historical epochs to re-do cartography for future memories. The reason I mentioned these above notes has to do with the impeccable producing of theories without a hint of ambiguity. Why defeat as Dennett apparently did when we know some people are.. just like that? We learn that Western imperialism prevents a lot of movement between One-to-Many perspectivism, what is unclear and vague consists of how many definitions and foreground luring is involved with tautologies in general (recuring themes that contribute to permanent state of paradoxical absurdities.)

/We/ the people are a failed gothic predicative that surmounts the worsened and worse evils as depiction of reality, a dystopia in all upheavals and regalia that we must be a small "shadow-y" personality, let alone the psychology needed to produce such failures. It's one of the reasons America for example weakens: they don't remember since historical epochs were replaced with the concept of refuge and forgetting the past indeterminates. It's another reason most of the world has history (to remember) but additional parameters that are self-determined and well-established to bellicose the entire structure of America as fundamentally weaker than Orientals or Europeans. The proof and methodical reason to stay within the boundaries of theory has to do with little others that circumvent what "collectivity" means to us beside the banalities of alienation that prevent movement or otherwise an Other to enlarge and relinquish some kind of power/force on self and other people.

Discontents prevents the paradox ultimately since it seeks answers regarding the grail of telos and the end-of-time predicament that will happen on our Earth no matter the chaos and basic dignitary failures most of our planet will suffer in the near future... Make catastrophic events before we engage vis-a-vis each other... This is also true of creative spirits.

I can read Lacan and draw analogues of objet-petite-a (the one who gazes smaller things), or the studious example of biology that teach much like herbivores did long ago that carnivores are somehow in the upper echelon of deterministic outcomes. If I give you an aberration of growth, what happens to it is surprising since it would require deprivation to experiment and entangle the largeness (imagine our planet without a moon. it is no longer a harsh mistress but a turf that cannot be won without a zero-summation victory.) The idea of amphibians come to mind as well: enlarged growth contributes to the shrinking of populations especially (pre)mammalian since the environment and ecology demand and supply of the causal chains to finally bring prey upon it's invoker of larger sentience: even whales in the ocean eat plankton and vignette sea creatures barely visible. hence, whales are blind and deaf.. they have sense-impressions that manifold as sonars and equivocate of travel. They actually /see/ the most and such did the great Leviathan in Old Testament texts because seeing is not within the eyes but a glance to finally encounter noumena which means a small gaze that emboldens your perspective for applying substratum beyond difference or the ugly topic of repetition: it is our past that needs to grow smaller and small enough to deviate from the norms of the future so to prevent any atrocity of large people (when you look back in the past and see older ancestors as some abominable large entity to rear... something in biology tries to prevent that issue...) aka the great enigma of Oocyte and plenums of woman since a small-woman achieves orgasm as mere anticipation, unlike the theory of small statue men which was caused by woman who cannot be small, boss-worthy.. otherwise, the rest of time is spent on why woman was used as peons to clean public places when they were destroyed. The idea and point being small men exist for similar reasons, and most of the homunculus theories seem short-sighted and/or longwinded, perhaps tunnel vision of the concept.

There exists long ago the theory of transmutation and effectively in associationism the term lycanthropy, which is when women gave evil eye to men, they would appear larger and more absurd.. it's one reason women often have troubles with sexual dysfunction: they (the woman) wants a small inanimate statue to upkeep their task of communication amongst other woman, it's truly a sad story that is worse than Sophocles and Oedipus Rex since that is when spell-bounds appeared as well in 12th century or so... most done through a 'homunculus' theory.

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