Homunculus
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A 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.
See also
- Woman with Homunculus by Egon Schiele [1] (1910)
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![[1]](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Egon_Schiele,_Woman_with_Homunculus,_1910..jpg){kind=link}