Prior, Martin; Rini, Adriana
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Aalborg Universitet Three Little Essays Arthur Prior in 1931 Jakobsen, David; Øhrstrøm, Peter; Prior, Martin; Rini, Adriana Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Publication date: 2020 Document Version Også kaldet Forlagets PDF Link to publication from Aalborg University Citation for published version (APA): Jakobsen, D., Øhrstrøm, P., Prior, M., & Rini, A. (red.) (2020). Three Little Essays: Arthur Prior in 1931. (1 udg.) Aalborg Universitetsforlag. Logic and Philosophy of Time Bind 3 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. ? Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. ? You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain ? You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us at [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from vbn.aau.dk on: December 26, 2020 Three Little Essays: Arthur Prior in 1931 Logic and Philosophy of Time, Vol. 3 David Jakobsen, Peter Øhrstrøm, Martin Prior & Adriane Rini (Eds.) Three Little Essays: Arthur Prior in 1931 Edited by: David Jakobsen, Peter Øhrstrøm, Martin Prior, & Adriane Rini Logic and Philosophy of Time, Volume 3 Three Little Essays: Arthur Prior in 1931 Logic and Philosophy of Time, Volume 3 Edited by David Jakobsen, Peter Øhrstrøm, Martin Prior & Adriane Rini Series editors: Per Hasle, Patrick Blackburn & Peter Øhrstrøm 1st Printed Edition © The authors and Aalborg University Press, 2020 Copy editing and interior design: Fatima Sabir Cover design: akila by Kirsten Bach Larsen Photo on front cover: A.N. Prior, courtesy of Martin Prior Set with the TeX Gyre Pagella & TeX Gyre Heros fonts ISBN: 978-87-7210-308-2 ISSN: 2596-4372 This book is financially supported by the Danish Council for Independent Research | Culture and Communication Published by: Aalborg University Press Kroghstræde 3 DK – 9220 Aalborg Ø Phone: +45 99407140 [email protected] forlag.aau.dk Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Table of Contents Preface Peter Øhrstrøm, David Jakobsen, Martin Prior & Adriane Rini 5 Prior in New Zealand, 1931 Adriane Rini 9 From Flower-Show to 'Praying Scientist': the Early Thought of Arthur Prior Mike Grimshaw 29 Arthur Prior's Early Thoughts on Predestination David Jakobsen & Peter Øhrstrøm 55 Arthur Prior's Early Thoughts on Physics and Cosmology Julie Lundbak Kofod 73 Essays Literary Arthur N. Prior Edited by Jørgen Albretsen, David Jakobsen and Mike Grimshaw 99 Essays Religious Arthur N. Prior Edited by David Jakobsen and Peter Øhrstrøm 167 3 Essay Scientific Arthur N. Prior Edited by Julie Lundbak Kofod, Jørgen Albretsen, and Peter Øhrstrøm 229 Appendix Arthur N. Prior Edited by Jørgen Albretsen and Peter Øhrstrøm 283 Preface Peter Øhrstrøm, David Jakobsen, Martin Prior & Adriane Rini Arthur Norman Prior was born in Masterton, New Zealand, December 4th, 1914. He went to secondary school at Wairarapa College and accord- ing to his younger brother, Ian Prior, Arthur was “one of the brightest people you could imagine. He had a strong intellect, was gentle and great fun.” (Prior 2006, p. 44). As he was completing his studies at Wairarapa High School in December 1931, he wrote three essays on sci- ence, literature and religion respectively. The essays were all written during September and October 1931. In addition, he wrote a short piece listing what he called My ideal library. The present volume contains all three essays, along with his list of the ideal library as well as four chap- ters analysing and discussing Prior’s texts. Taking Prior’s age into account –– he was only sixteen-years old when he wrote the essays –– their quality is remarkably high. They bear the mark of a young mind, ready to take the toughest questions head on. The essays reveal that Prior read a lot, read recent research and had interests which spanned a wide range, from poetry to quan- tum mechanics. This volume includes careful discussion of each of the three essays and their importance in light of Prior’s later philosophical and logical writings. The essays themselves deal with existential mat- ters. They circle around the topic of determinism, questioning human freedom, and they argue for a ‘predestinarian’ worldview in which God has control over the minutest of things in reality, and nothing is left 5 either to chance or to human free choice. Although Prior later changed his view on these matters, the topic of predestination remained central to his thought throughout his life, and it is of particular interest in con- nection with his pioneering work on tense-logic. Prior wrote the essays as three small handwritten booklets with his own illustrations. The booklets on Science and Religion are kept at the Bodleian library, Oxford, the Ann Prior collection, box 13. A photocopy of the booklet on Literature resides at the Macmillan Library of the Uni- versity of Canterbury, Christchurch (Grimshaw 2002, p. 482). For this collection each of the Three Little Essays has been edited separately by teams of scholars who have provided editorial notes to the primary ma- terial. In addition, readers will find detailed commentaries of the es- says, provided by scholars well acquainted with Prior’s early years. In the present edition Prior’s illustrations have been reproduced by Julie Lundbak Kofod. In the edition of the Essays we have chosen to keep Prior’s page numbers from the booklets — in curly brackets. Prior’s page numbers from the booklets will also be used as references in this volume. For instance, p. 115 of Essays Religious is referred to as “ER p. 115” — or just “p. 115” if the reference to ER is evident from the context — should be understood as a reference to page 115 in Prior’s booklet on religion. We want to thank the persons who have contributed to the vari- ous parts of this book, Mike Grimshaw, Julie Lundbak Kofod, Jørgen Albretsen, and Fatima Sabir. Furthermore, we also thank the Bodleian Library, the Macmillan Library of the University of Canterbury, and the Danish Council for Independent Research, for making this book pos- sible. Bibliography [1] Grimshaw, M. (2002). “The Prior Prior: Neglected early writings of Arthur N. Prior”. The Heythrop Journal XLIII, 43: 480-495. 6 [2] Prior, I.A.M. (2006). Elespie and Ian: Memoir of a Marriage. Welling- ton: Steele Roberts Ltd. 7 8 Prior in New Zealand, 1931 Adriane Rini Massey University, New Zealand [email protected] Abstract Arthur Prior’s Three Little Essays included in this volume were written in New Zealand in the midst of the Great Depression. They provide insight into the mind of a schoolboy from a doctor’s family in provincial New Zealand, and reveal to us the teenager’s concerns and personal reflections. When viewed against his later writings, these essays enable us to see how themes which interested the precocious schoolboy sometimes carry over into the mature philosopher’s work. The essays also reveal that Prior’s remarkable ability to discern parallels of reasoning across different areas was a skill present even in his youth. When scholars offer biographical introductions of Arthur Norman Prior, they typically begin by describing Prior as coming from the small New Zealand town –– sometimes it is described as the ‘sleepy’ New Zealand town –– of Masterton, where Prior was born in 1914. After such pass- ing mention of his birthplace, these biographical introductions usually take a large leap forward in time, of some forty years, shifting focus in order to concentrate their attention on the philosophical and logical con- tributions, from the 1950s and 1960s, for which Prior is best known and studied. The present book is different. 9 In 2019, scholars working to produce a digital archive of Prior’s Nachlass gained access to a collection of essays and correspondence pre- served by Prior’s son Martin and daughter Ann. Included in this col- lection were three short works by Arthur Prior, each in its own small notebook, each neatly written in longhand, and each curiously making use of three separate colours of ink. The essays are dated September to October 1931. Their author was sixteen years old at the time. These Three Little Essays have been transcribed, edited, and reproduced in this volume, along with specially-commissioned commentaries by Prior scholars. When I first heard of the Three Little Essays, my reaction was one of scepticism about their value –– yes, it is remarkable to have to hand the unpublished compositions of a teenager who would later become a famous logician and philosopher. Yes, certainly. But these are, after all, the essays of a sixteen-year old. To put the point another way, their author was, at the time when he wrote the essays, several years younger than my youngest undergraduates. This new material in the Prior collection, however, is not even the work of an undergraduate –– the essays are the work of a schoolboy. Each of the essays has a single focus. One is on religion, one on literature, one on science. Or as young Arthur called them Essays Religious, Essays Literary, Essays Scientific. What could possibly be of scholarly interest in Prior’s Three Little Essays? Answering that is the aim of this volume. As the other contribu- tors highlight, deeper themes emerge which reach far beyond the three broad ones indicated by Prior’s titles.