John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) was born in the village of Duns, Berwickshire. At the age of fourteen he entered a Franciscan seminary in Scotland at Haddington, Dumfries. After being ordained in 1291 he continued his studies in theology and philosophy at Oxford and Paris. Through his mentor at Paris, Peter of Spain, he was influenced by Islamic philosophy, especially Avicenna and Averroes. He received his doctorate from Paris in 1305 and became professor at Cologne where he remained until his premature death.

Nicknamed the "Subtle Doctor," Scotus originated many subtle but important distinctions that have continued to influence philosophers as diverse as Leibniz, Heidegger and Peirce. Yet he also concocted an idea that has since become one of the central tenets of Roman Catholic dogma and believed by hundreds of millions of people: the Immaculate Conception. After much subsequent debate among Christian theologians, the councils of Basel (1439) and Trent (1546) finally sided with what came to be called the "Scotist opinion" and some years later Pius IX issued the bull Ineffabilis Deus declaring Scotus' notion of the Immaculate Conception to be a divine revelation that must under threat of Hell be believed without question.

Although Scotus' contributions to philosophy are somewhat less dramatic, he is generally regarded as the most important of the British medieval thinkers.

bio by Daniel Kolak in Lovers of Wisdom
(Wadsworth, 1997)