Walter Burley, renowned logician, natural philosopher and theologian, was born in 1274 or 1275, perhaps at Burley-in-Wharfedale or Burley, near Leeds, in Yorkshire, England. He studied and taught both at Oxford (c. 1294–c.1309) and at the University of Paris (c.1309–1327). Based in England from 1327–1341, he perhaps spent his last years in retirement in southern France and Italy (1341–1344).

Oxford

Burley was a master of arts by 1301 and is mentioned as a fellow of Merton College in 1305. He appears to have heard John Duns Scotus lecture on the Sentences, probably in the academic year 1298–1299, and adopts some Scotistic positions in later works: that being qua being is the primary and adequate object of the intellect, and that the intellect understands the singular as singular. If Burley began to study theology at Oxford, he and William of Ockham, whose studies began c.1307–1308, may have been...