Talk:Homunculus

message: 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)
thread_title: Initial text

message: 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)
thread_title:  Wolf's Rain? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Homunculi in Art 

message: 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)
thread_title: Homunculus Creation?

message: 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  by Macmillan UK in October 2006 and now available in paperback (March 2007), ). 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)
thread_title: Removal of commercial text

message: 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)
thread_title:  Once Upon a Time... Life 

message: This section needs to be sorted better. -Sox207 18:43, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Film and Pop Culture 

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

message: 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)
thread_title:  Introduction 

message: 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 . 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 . 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)
thread_title: No homunculus in spermist theory

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

message: 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)
thread_title: other instances

message: 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)
thread_title: McCain Citation

message: Would a halfling from D&D be counted as one, or would it have to be smaller?  Livingston 10:57, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  What exactly counts as a homunculus 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Jabir ibn Hayyan was not an Ismaili 

message: 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)
thread_title:  The popular culture section is much too long and mostly trivia 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Opening paragraph 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Why the pop culture section? 

message: "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)
thread_title:  re Searle: swapping symbols without truly understanding what the symbols mean 

message: 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)
thread_title:  re Searle: in which he likens a computer translating Chinese into English 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Trivia / other content 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Peter Lorenz 

message: 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)
thread_title: "Homunculus"

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Homunculus. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110722140946/http://jkms.kams.or.kr/2003/pdf/12905.pdf to http://jkms.kams.or.kr/2003/pdf/12905.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 08:46, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Eastern European Homunculus?