John Duns Scotus was born in 1265 or 1266 nEar Duns Castle in Scotland to a leading family of the area. His birth would have involved the usual noise and mess that any birth involves. When he grew up he became a friar who was a great thinker, philosopher and theologian coming up with the concepts of the "univocity of being", a way of distinguishing between different formalities of the same thing, and the idea of haecceity. He also developed a complex argument for the existence of God. A couple of hundred years after his death, his critics. who were pushing Renaissance thinking, dubbed any of his followers as a dunce a term which, rather unfairly, has come to mean a stupid person. John carried out his studying and lecturing in many a venue including Oxford, Paris and Cologne. Gladys was rather drawn to John and often watched him over the boundary fence. She paid a few pence to buy him some food and make him a meal of penne with creamy mushrooms. But her advances on John were all wasted as John was true to his bachelor calling.
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