Centuries after the alchemists started trying to grow lab partners out of semen-smeared foodstuffs, the tiny man-creatures known as homunculi got their first big promotion. To understand how these pint-sized chaps wormed their way into 17th century scientific comprehension – and, in fact, directly into the human genitals – it helps to understand the theory of preformation. In the 17th century, people (scientists included) believed that when God created the universe, he had simultaneously created every living creature that would ever exist, such that animals were like Russian nesting dolls, packed with a theoretically infinite number of successively smaller versions of themselves that would go on maturing and birthing each other for generations. The ramifications for humans? Loins stuffed to bursting with tiny people – homunculi (who, in turn, have mini-homunculi inside their own tiny junk [et al]).

Beyond a shrugged “sex = babies?,” little was known about the specifics of human reproduction, so when Dutch tradesman Antoine Van Leeuwenhoek rubbed one out on his microscope and discovered spermatozoa, only one rational explanation came to mind: these cells were the tiny wriggling vehicles that the pre-formed future humans – the tiny Homunculi – piloted up through a woman’s vagina and into the womb, where they then grow to baby size. The idea sounded a little crazy, and not everyone was on board – some folks were convinced that the homunculi actually drove the ova, which had been discovered several years earlier. This controversy led to one of the great dead-end rivalries of proto-modern science: Spermists (or, as spell check is concerned, “Spearmints”) vs. Ovists. So the diehard Spearmints tried to explain why God would kill off millions of preformed humans in every batch of ejaculate. The Ovists struggled to understand why sperm, and, hence, men, are necessary if all future humans already exist within women. No one had any friggin’ idea why some children looked more like their mothers, some more like their fathers and others more like Uncle Jake, who isn’t really even their uncle. Mom just says to call him that.

Finally, the whole mess was brought to a screeching halt by spontaneous generation, a theory that seemed to nullify both sides, and found the homunculi pitched headfirst through the windshield of whatever sex cell they’d been illegally operating. Excited by Leeuwenhoek’s sperm revelation, scientists had started putting all kinds of crap under microscope lenses. What they found again and again – in broth and beer and bread – were tiny organisms that had seemingly sprout (or spontaneously generated) out of thin air. In an age before any understanding of microorganisms, this discovery seemed to demonstrate that new (read: non-preformed) living things could simply be grown out of inanimate matter. People began wondering if maybe human reproduction worked by a similar principle.

And with all the confidence of the alchemists, who had essentially used the tenets of spontaneous generation to imagine homunculi in the first place, scientists kicked homunculi to the curb, flipped off god and started trying to create life in sealed vials of mud (spoiler alert: epic fail. LOLZ).

Friday – Homunculi and Philosophy

Twitter this