The word 'homunculus' is correct and usable in written English.
It is a noun that is used to refer to a miniature, fully-formed human figure that is usually believed to be artificially created. For example, "The alchemist created a homunculus from a mixture of clay and powerful herbs".
This book lets the homunculus (little guy) get his own back.And how.
The time-honoured idea that the mind is essentially a little man, or homunculus, who sits in the brain doing clever things soon becomes problematic: who does all the clever things in the little man's brain?
Microsoft, though a titan in personal-computer software, is a homunculus in mobile devices.
Yet as a group the Towton men are a reminder that images of the medieval male as a homunculus with rotten teeth are well wide of the mark.
For it is hard to ask what is generating them and what is perceiving them without concluding that the processes are separate.Daniel Dennett, a doyen among philosophers of consciousness, disparagingly refers to the putative "observing self" in this scenario as a homunculus.
And he points out that exactly the same problem applies to how the homunculus would perceive its own qualia.
"Whatever we were doing murder, atrocities God was always on our side," remarks a Vietnam veteran.In this section Mary Queen of Scots and her mother-in-law The human weapon Modern slavery A little help for homunculus The problem of realism Just a bit quirky Reprints Related items Napoleon, Nelson and Wellington: Men of magicOct 10th 2002What makes men fight?
The queen had become desperate; the plot was demented and, again, the whole affair was cynically exploited by the English.In this section Mary Queen of Scots and her mother-in-law The human weapon Modern slavery A little help for homunculus The problem of realism Just a bit quirky ReprintsCatherine de Medici's reputation is harder to salvage.
But the burden of proof, Mr Dennett argues, is on them, for they are in effect claiming that the human mind is made up of "wonder tissue" with miraculous, mind-moulding properties that are, even in principle, beyond the reach of science an old-fashioned homunculus in all but name.Mr Dennett's book is not a definitive solution to such mind-benders; it is philosophy in action.
In the USA, The Daily Show and its homunculus, The Colbert Report, have been bashing the government for many years, while in Britain, TV Times owners with magnifying glasses were well aware of the existence of John Bird, John Fortune and Rory Bremner in their various incarnations.
From the time of the Greek philosopher Aristotle it was debated whether the embryo was a preformed, miniature individual (a homunculus) or an undifferentiated form that gradually became specialized.
