Note 1. Ratio can mean: 'reason', 'cause', 'definition', 'conception', and other things. Here it means reason or cause.
Note 2. Here ratio means definition or conception.
Note 3. Primo: If anything that is X is X because it is Y, and nothing is Y because it is anything else, then X belongs to Y primo. Thus if 'having interior angles adding to 180 degrees' belongs to an isosceles triangle, and to any other sort of triangle, because it is a triangle, and does not belong to triangle because triangle is something else (plane figure or whatever), then having interior angles etc. belongs primo to triangle. If individuality belongs to Socrates because of X, then X is individual primo.
Note 4. In Aristotle's theory of physical change, the underlying matter remains the same when one substance is changed into another..cw 9.cw 8
Note 5. Scotus refers to this variously as 'the individuating entity', 'the individuating reality', 'the reality of the individual', 'the individual difference', 'thisness' (haeceitas).
Note 6. In question 2 Scotus criticised Henry of Ghent's theory according to which singularity is due to two negations, one excluding further division into species, the other excluding identification of this individual with any other.
Note 7. In question 4 Scotus criticised the theory, held by Thomas Aquinas and others, that individuation is by quantity. His main argument is that quantity is an accident, i.e. something that must be in some existing substance, and the existence of a substance already requires its singularity: substances therefore cannot be individuated by any accident, but must be individuated by something that is per se part of the individual substance. Substance and accident do not form a per se unity, only a per accidens unity.
Note 8. 'Subjective parts' means the individuals who are parts (we might say 'members') of the species. 'Quantitative parts' are the countable or measurable parts of some whole.
Note 9. That is, the less than numerical unity of the specific nature.
Note 10. That is, 'something diverse + something the same', like (YX) and (ZX), in which Y and Z are diverse and X is the same or common. See Aristotle, Metaphysics X.3 (1054 b22 ff): two things are different if they contain some common element but are differentiated by something peculiar to each; they are diverse if they have nothing in common. YX and ZX are different, Y and Z are diverse; the former are differentiated by the diversity of the latter.
Note 11. That is, analogous things can be said of unity: just as individuals do not differ through their specific natures but through something added, so each individual will not be numerically one through the specific nature but through something added.
Note 12. See extract in Hyman and Walsh, Philosophy in the Middle Ages, p. 584.
Note 13. See Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, I.3, 73 a34 ff, and Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's 'Posterior Analytics', book I, lecture 10.
Note 14. That is, under an adjective, as in 'animated body'.
Note 15. That is, the specific nature.
Note 16. That is, the individuating entity.
Note 17. Division into 'essential parts' here means into parts having different essences, such as the division of a genus into species; an ultimate species cannot be sub-divided thus.
Note 18. The specific differences of the ultimate species are 'simply simple', i.e. incapable of further analysis into determinable and determinant.
Note 19. Thus 'animate' and 'rational' are not primo diversa, since rational beings are animate.
Note 20. This is not in the text in its current state.
Note 21. An owl cannot see in the daytime not because of any defect in the sunlight but because its eye excludes bright light.
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