Tag: Nicolaas Hartsoeker

Preformationism & the Homunculus

October 21, 2010 By arne hendriks 1

In 1694 Nicolaas Hartsoeker, in his Essai de Dioptrique produced an image of a tiny human form curled up inside a sperm cell, He referred to it as petit l’infant, the small infant. This image, depicting what historians now refer to as the homunculus, has become iconic of the…