JITOTM07: Hello, homunculus!

If the homunculus was a superhero, he'd have two things going for him: a heavy-sounding name, and the power of occasional reincarnation!

The homunculus has been all over. At one point, he showed up in seventeenth-century biological theory, as a tiny, perfectly formed man curled up in the head of a human sperm cell. The plucky little gaffer stuck around in that guise for about a century before advances in biology did him in.

Later, the homunculus was revived (in name, anyway) by philosophers, this time as the lone member of the audience in the theatre of the mind... a tiny, ever-present watcher who represented our best understanding of consciousness for a while. Eventually, modern thinking about thinking took a few steps forward, and the hapless homunculus was lost in the dust once more.

But you can't keep a good man down, no matter how small he may be... and the homunculus is on the rise once more, in a third incarnation. This time, he's a golem-like caricature of a human being, born from bundles of brain activity in the primary sensory cortex.

Sometimes confusing, sometimes comical and sometimes cute, the homunculus is nothing if not persistent. Meet the wee man in Episode 7 of Jay Ingram's Theatre of the Mind, Hello, homunculus!

Behind the curtain:

• Our song of the week was "The Last Man" by Jory Nash
  


• Remember "Brainard" by David Matheson? It was the song of the week a couple of episodes ago, but we liked it so well we decided to use clips from it as theme music.
  


• I said we'd post pictures of the homunculus. Here's an animated version, from a site for kids (minus the genital area which must be "highly sensitive" in more ways than one.)
  


• Here, look: two homunculi! One represents the sensory cortex and one the motor cortex. They make a fine pair.
  


• Can't get enough homunculus? This Wikipedia entry has the mini-man covered in astounding detail.
  

Anything you'd care to share? Drop a note in the comments box, or just email us here. Thanks for listening - we're listening too.

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