ABSTRACT
Beginning from the mid-twelfth century, a new scientific approach to reality came into vogue in the Latin world. During the Patristic period, theology had been proclaimed as the "true philosophy" by Christian authors from Justin Martyr through Clement of Alexandria and Origen to Augustine. The most radical and consequential innovations addressing this problem of integrating the two cultures are offered a generation after Aquinas by Duns Scotus. Scotus acknowledges another, higher sphere of transcendent and divine reality, but he brackets it as inaccessible for distinct theoretical knowing. But the humanly known sphere, thanks to the univocal concept of being, is deemed sufficient to provide its own foundation. Scotus still cares a lot about the transcendent sphere, which can be accessed through revelation, as well as practically through ethics and the will. The mind furnishes its own concepts and imposes them on the real.
