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+--- Thread: Homunculi: Fabricating the Artificial Man (/showthread.php?tid=2071)
Homunculi: Fabricating the Artificial Man - Paul Ferguson - 05-29-2025
Matthew A. McIntosh.
"In the medieval and early modern period, the boundaries between science, mysticism, and religion were fluid and permeable. The physician, alchemist, and philosopher Theophrastus von Hohenheim—better known as Paracelsus (1493–1541)—embodied this synthesis. Rejecting the Galenic traditions dominant in contemporary medicine, Paracelsus sought to merge empirical observation with spiritual insight. His work De Natura Rerum (Of the Nature of Things), a series of treatises first printed in the late sixteenth century, epitomizes this endeavor. Among its most intriguing and controversial passages is a procedure Paracelsus claims can fabricate an “artificial man”—a homunculus. This essay explores that procedure in its historical, philosophical, and symbolic context, arguing that Paracelsus’s artificial man should be understood not only as a speculative alchemical product, but also as an expression of a broader vision in which man, nature, and the divine are intrinsically interwoven."
https://brewminate.com/fabricating-the-artificial-man-paracelsus-and-homunculus-in-de-natura-rerum-1537/