DUNS SCOTUS, Johannes, one of the greatest of the mediaeval schoolmen, b. either in 1274 or 1266, probably in Ireland; d Cologne 130& Early in life he entered the Franciscan order, and studied at Oxford under William Ware. He was also influenced by Roger Bacon. About 1294 he taught at Oxford and defended the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. In 1304 he went to Paris, and in 1308, by the order of his superiors, to Cologne. The extreme deli cacy and intricacy of his dialectic won him the title of the Subtle Doctor. He was less a sys tematist than a critic and attacked most of his contemporaries and immediate predecessors, especially Saint Thomas. He starts from the same initial stock of notions as Saint Thomas, but makes a different application of these no tions. One of the most important principles of Scotism is that theology, unlike philosophy, is not a speculative but apractical science—the science of conduct, and that philosophy is defi nitely subordinate to theology. Scotism adds to the two forms of matter of the Thcmtists — that possessing only primary qualities and that also endowed with secondary qualities —a third, unqualified, tabula rasa matter, the same in both spiritual and corporeal substances. There are a hierarchy of forms of increasing degrees of specification. The substantial character of whatever is individual has its origin in nature, while that of the universal is derived from rea son. The faculty of will is pre-eminent over that of intelligence, and that it is always possi ble to will the evil. This priority of the will
applies to God himself, and the good consists solely of the decrees of the Divine will. The soul is the form of the body, but not the same form that endows it with its organic structure.
Scotus became the founder of the traditional philosophy of the Franciscans. Francis of Mayron (d. 1325) carried to a ridiculous ex treme the excessive subtlety of his master. During the Revival of Learning the Scotists were strangely reactionary and opposed to the new studies, so that the word °Duns"' or °Dunce° came to mean first °pedant° then °fool.° Scotus' most important work is the collec tion of his commentaries known as the