- Lived:
- c. 1266–1308 · Duns, Scotland → Oxford → Paris → Cologne
- Tradition:
- Medieval scholasticism; Franciscan; the "Subtle Doctor"
- The Big Idea:
- "Being" means the same thing whether we say it of God or of a grain of sand — and every individual thing has a thisness all its own that nothing else in the universe shares.
- In their words:
- "Scotland bore me, England received me, France taught me, Cologne holds me." (his tomb's epitaph)
- If you remember one thing:
- The philosopher so precise they called him subtle became, centuries later, the source of the word dunce — and the mockery was exactly wrong.