Scotus, Duns

Duns (1265?-1308), a Franciscan friar, prominent as a scholastic, philosopher, and theologian. His real name was John Duns, Scotus being a cognomen signifying his Gaelic origin. The surname Duns is without doubt from the name of a place, perhaps Dunse, Scotland, although Luke Wadding has attempted to prove the philosopher a native of Ireland, while John Leland has brought forward arguments to prove the name to be derived from Dunstane, a village in Northumberland, England. Scotus entered the order of Franciscan friars while young. He studied at Oxford and become a fellow of Merton College. His theological lectures were attended by crowds of students. In 1304 he removed to Paris, where he continued teaching theology with great success. He was an earnest champion of the doctrine of the immaculate conception, defending it against the objections of Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar. In philosophy, he was a realist, and held tenaciously to the doctrine of the absolute freedom of the human will. The followers of the two men, Scotus and Aquinas, were called Scotists and Thomists, and controversies between them were long carried on, deriving bitterness doubtless from the jealousy between the Franciscans and Dominicans. Scotus died at Cologne, Germany, when on a mission for his order.

Scotus' power lay in acute negative criticism of the views of others,--in the destroying of arguments by his hair-splitting fashion of reasoning,--rather than in any forcible establishment of his own position. So keen and ingenious was he in refuting the arguments of his opponents that he won the nickname of Doctor Subtilis, or "The Subtle Doctor." His followers came to be called Dunsmen by the Thomists. On the revival of learning, the scholastic methods of reasoning fell into disrepute. Then the Dunsmen "raged in every pulpit" against the study of the classics. Gradually the word Dunsman came to signify one opposed to learning, then one slow of learning or dull, and has finally degenerated into the one word "dunce," meaning a blockhead.

See Scholasticism