Arthur Norman Prior was born in Masterton, NZ, on Dec 4th 1914, exactly 100 years ago. Fifty-four years later, in October 1959, he passed away in Norway, on a visiting professorship there, leaving a widow and two children, myself and my sister. During that time he started off as a medical student – following in his father’s footsteps – then turned to theology. But that wasn’t ideal either: he was at a theological hall when he broke the rules by getting married – to his first wife. He was evicted from the hall despite his plea that he was very sorry he wouldn’t do it again, and the faculty was also not amused either: would-be ministers should take their time finding a suitable partner, so he saw reason and turned to philosophy. And didn’t look back.
While a student, probably a medical student, during the depression days of the ’30s, the authorities were recruiting students to control unemployed rioters. As an ‘unthinking Tory’ he went down to join up, but the office was closed for lunch. After lunch he was a ‘thinking’ socialist – in fact a Christian socialist.
In the late ’thirties and early ’40s he and his wife spent some years in England, with visits to France, Italy and even Germany . He took a considerable interest in political, religious and philosophical issues around him. He was a prolific book and article reviewer: I am not clear how they earned their bread and butter, but there were no academic openings. As happened before and after, kiwis don’t necessarily have the right connections and operate on the right wave-length.
During the War he signed up to the NZ Air Force, spending most of the time in the New Hebrides (now Kiribati), with spells back in NZ, in fact the base in Christchurch, when there was a certain twinkle of the eye.
After the War, in 1946, he took a temporary post in Christchurch, at the Canterbury College of the University of New Zealand, succeeding Karl Popper who took up a post at the LSE. Soon this post became permanent. And Karl Popper had been a very controversial person at Canterbury, impressing upon people his superior intellect, and Prior steered a middle path.
The late ’forties saw a transition from an interest in philosophy of religion to one in formal logic.
During this transition his book on ‘Logic and the Basis of Ethics’ was published. And in the early ’fifties he wrote a book entitled ‘Formal Logic’, through which he proved himself as a “teacher’s teacher”. This large volume was a way of thinking aloud, and in fact he discarded some chapters which were perhaps ahead of his time in an early manuscript.
As wiki says: "Almost entirely self-taught in modern formal logic, Prior published his first paper on logic in 1952, when he was already 38 years of age, shortly after discovering the work of Józef Maria Bocheński and Jan Łukasiewicz, very little of whose work was then translated into English. ... Prior's work on tense logic provides a systematic and extended defence of a tensed conception of reality in which material objects are construed as three-dimensional continuants which are wholly present at each moment of their existence."
Thus in the development of his thinking he made extensive contacts with Polish logicians, and became a fervent convert to the ‘Polish notation’ - in which a connective is placed before what it connects, rather than in between, and in which brackets are never required.
In 1956 he and the family visited Oxford, where, as John Locke Lecturer, he talked about how the logic of time and modal logic, the logic of the possible, have similar structures. As the Stanford e-Encyclopedia states:
"Prior desired to formalise the ancient insight that propositions can change in truth value with the passage of time. He soon realised that off-the-shelf modal syntax could be adapted to do this. It was simply a matter of taking seriously an idea that he had discussed in The Craft of Formal Logic: tense is a species of modality, to be set alongside the ordinary (‘alethic’) modes of necessity and possibility. His first explorations of this calculus of tenses appeared in his article ‘Diodoran Modalities’ (completed by early 1954), where he wrote:
"I here propose to do something a little different, namely to employ the ordinary propositional variables ‘p’, ‘q’, ‘r’ etc., for ‘propositions’ in the Diodoran sense [i.e. propositions which ‘may be true at one time and false at another’] and to use certain operators which take such propositions as arguments, and which form functions taking such propositions as values. I shall use ‘Fp’ for ‘It will be the case that p’."
Thus in the development of his thinking he made extensive contacts with Polish logicians, and became a fervent convert to the ‘Polish notation’ - in which a connective is placed before what it connects, rather than in between, and in which brackets are never required.
In 1956 he and the family visited Oxford, where, as John Locke Lecturer, he talked about how the logic of time and modal logic, the logic of the possible, have similar structures. As the Stanford e-Encyclopedia states:
"Prior desired to formalise the ancient insight that propositions can change in truth value with the passage of time. He soon realised that off-the-shelf modal syntax could be adapted to do this. It was simply a matter of taking seriously an idea that he had discussed in The Craft of Formal Logic: tense is a species of modality, to be set alongside the ordinary (‘alethic’) modes of necessity and possibility. His first explorations of this calculus of tenses appeared in his article ‘Diodoran Modalities’ (completed by early 1954), where he wrote:
"I here propose to do something a little different, namely to employ the ordinary propositional variables ‘p’, ‘q’, ‘r’ etc., for ‘propositions’ in the Diodoran sense [i.e. propositions which ‘may be true at one time and false at another’] and to use certain operators which take such propositions as arguments, and which form functions taking such propositions as values. I shall use ‘Fp’ for ‘It will be the case that p’."
In this he was mindful of the work of medieval and classical philosophers, especially Diodorus Cronos of Iasus, Asia Minor. It might be noted that in Prior's work, possible worlds, past time and future time required separate philosophical accounts.
After two years back in NZ, we came back to the UK, where he spent the last 11 years of his life, eight in Manchester as a Professor, and then three years in Oxford as a don.
Those last 11 years saw more writings on the logic of time and tense, and a number of posthumous writings were published, including ‘Worlds, Times and Selves’, talking additionally on identity. He also addressed the issue of whether events can be treated as ‘things’, and this discussion appeared in another posthumous book “Objects of Thought”.
As regards the man we can say that after his time in the RNZAF he would tell 'shaggy dog' stories he'd learnt in the Air Force to a spellbound party audience, where he would get thoroughly 'sozzled'. He made an excellent harvest of elderberry wine and cider from Farmhouse Fare, the Farmers' Weekly cookery book with fruit from Shropshire, and also went in for homebrewing. He was very fond of canal boating, and would steer the boat barefoot.
Sadly he never knew "Bruce's Song", the Monty Python Aussie philosophers' song, of which extracts:
"Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: 'I drink, therefore I am'
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed!"
However it is believed that he would have given an excellent interpretation. He admired Old Parr, the Oldest Man in England in the reign of Charles II who had to do penance for adultery at the age of 103 (or thereabouts).
After two years back in NZ, we came back to the UK, where he spent the last 11 years of his life, eight in Manchester as a Professor, and then three years in Oxford as a don.
Those last 11 years saw more writings on the logic of time and tense, and a number of posthumous writings were published, including ‘Worlds, Times and Selves’, talking additionally on identity. He also addressed the issue of whether events can be treated as ‘things’, and this discussion appeared in another posthumous book “Objects of Thought”.
As regards the man we can say that after his time in the RNZAF he would tell 'shaggy dog' stories he'd learnt in the Air Force to a spellbound party audience, where he would get thoroughly 'sozzled'. He made an excellent harvest of elderberry wine and cider from Farmhouse Fare, the Farmers' Weekly cookery book with fruit from Shropshire, and also went in for homebrewing. He was very fond of canal boating, and would steer the boat barefoot.
Sadly he never knew "Bruce's Song", the Monty Python Aussie philosophers' song, of which extracts:
"Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: 'I drink, therefore I am'
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed!"
However it is believed that he would have given an excellent interpretation. He admired Old Parr, the Oldest Man in England in the reign of Charles II who had to do penance for adultery at the age of 103 (or thereabouts).
