Introduction
Since antiquity, the concept of homunculus (“little human being” in Latin) was associated with mimetic, Promethean speculations on the ability to imitate the work and function of nature by means of human art, especially the art of alchemy (Newman 2004; LaGrandeur 2013). In the early modern period, a notable one was the version advanced by Swiss physician and natural philosopher Paracelsus (1493/1494–1541).
Paracelsus and the Homunculus
A popular image of Paracelsus is that of an alchemical adept fascinated with the quest for creating a humanoid in vitro (Ball 2006). This image inspired Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) to present an alchemically created homunculus in the second part of his tragedy Faust, completed in 1831 (Witkowski 1920). However, Paracelsus did not systematize his concept of homunculus in his writings. As its typology shows, it can be classified into at least three types (Murase 2020).
The first type is a pathological one. In his De homunculis et...
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Murase, A. (2020). Homunculus. In: Jalobeanu, D., Wolfe, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_479-1
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