- published: 17 Jul 2015
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Coordinates: 55°46′42″N 2°20′33″W / 55.77838°N 2.3426°W / 55.77838; -2.3426
Duns ( historically Scots: Dunse, Scottish Gaelic: An Dùn) is the county town of the historic county of Berwickshire, within the Scottish Borders.
Duns law, the original site of the town of Duns, has the remains of an Iron Age hillfort at its summit. Similar structures nearby, such as the structure at Edin's Hall Broch, suggest the area's domestic and defensive use at a very early stage.
The first written mention of Duns is when a 'Hugo de Duns' signed as a witness to a charter before 1214. The town is further mentioned when a 'Robert of Douns' signed the Ragman Roll in 1296. The early settlement was sited on the slopes of Duns Law, close to the original Duns Castle built in 1320 by the Earl of Moray, nephew of Robert the Bruce. The town was frequently attacked by the English in border raids and as they headed north to the Lothians. In 1333 the Guardian of Scotland, Sir Archibald Douglas, mustered an army in Duns to march on Berwick, which at that time was under siege by the English. The Scots troops were heavily defeated at the Battle of Halidon Hill.
John (Johannes, Ioannes) Duns Scotus, O.F.M. (c. 1256 – November 18, 1308) was one of the more important theologians and philosophers of the High Middle Ages. He was given the medieval accolade Doctor Subtilis (Subtle Doctor) for his penetrating and subtle manner of thought.
Scotus has had considerable influence on Roman Catholic thought. The doctrines for which he is best known are the "univocity of being," that existence is the most abstract concept we have, applicable to everything that exists; the formal distinction, a way of distinguishing between different aspects of the same thing; and the idea of haecceity, the property supposed to be in each individual thing that makes it an individual. Scotus also developed a complex argument for the existence of God, and argued for the Immaculate conception of Mary.
Little is known of Scotus' life. He was probably born in 1265, probably at Duns, in Berwickshire, Scotland. In 1291 he was ordained as a priest in Northampton, England. A note in Codex 66 of Merton College, Oxford, records that Scotus "flourished at Cambridge, Oxford and Paris. He began lecturing on Peter Lombard's Sentences at the prestigious University of Paris in the Autumn of 1302. Later in that academic year, however, he was expelled from the University of Paris for siding with then Pope Boniface VIII in his feud with Philip the Fair of France, over the taxation of church property.
William of Ockham ( /ˈɒkəm/; also Occam, Hockham, or several other spellings; c. 1288 – c. 1348) was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey. He is considered to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of the fourteenth century. Although he is commonly known for Ockham's razor, the methodological principle that bears his name, William of Ockham also produced significant works on logic, physics, and theology. In the Church of England, his day of commemoration is 10 April.
William of Ockham joined the Franciscan order at an early age. It is believed that he studied theology at the University of Oxford from 1309 to 1321, but never completed his master's degree (the usual undergraduate degree in those times). Because of this, he acquired the byname Venerabilis Inceptor, or "Worthy Beginner" (an inceptor was a student formally admitted to the ranks of teachers by the university authorities). He was also known as the Doctor Invincibilis or "Unconquerable Teacher."