So someone mentioned that they'd met people who believed that the fetuses were 'perfectly formed infants from the instant of implantation, just getting bigger' with a suggestion to look up the word 'homunculus.'[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus[/url] wrote:"The term homunculus was later used in the discussion of conception and birth. In 1694, Nicolas Hartsoeker discovered "animalcules" in the sperm of humans and other animals. Some claimed that the sperm was in fact a "little man" (homunculus) that was placed inside a woman for growth into a child; these later became known as the spermists. This seemed to neatly explain many of the mysteries of conception (for instance, why it takes two). However it was later pointed out that if the sperm was a homunculus, identical in all but size to an adult, then the homunculus may have sperm of its own. This led to a reductio ad absurdum, with a chain of homunculi "all the way down." This was not necessarily considered a fatal objection however, as it neatly explained how it was that "in Adam" all had sinned: the whole of humanity was already contained in his loins."
I don't know whether to laugh or not. The idea of tiny men in sperm containing tinier men in their sperm, who contain even yet tinier men in their sperm...and so on. It's...like the mirrors at the barber shop, only not at all.
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