Encyclopedia of Philosophy: LANGUAGE- DuNS Scotus

Scotus' tendency to restrict the field of operation of philosophy is carried further by his successor, William Ockham. William, like Scotus a Franciscan friar, came from the village of Ockham in Surrey; he was born about 1285 and studied at Oxford shortly after Scotus had left it. He lectured on the Sentences from 1317 to 1319, but never took his MA, having fallen foul of the Chancellor of the University, John Lutterell. He went to London where, in the 1320s, he wrote up his Oxford lectures, and composed a systematic treatise on logic as well as commentaries on Aristotle and Porphyry. In 1324 he was summoned to Avignon to answer charges of heresy brought by Lutterell, and soon afterwards gave up his interest in theoretical philosophy.