I don't remember if I thought of the name Arthur Prior before or after I started researching temporal logic, one led directly to the other but I do have a sneaking suspicion that the name came first. Or rather, it is the case that in the present that the name < subject, whereas < denotes "earlier than." I say this only because previous to both incidents I had smoked quite a large amount of marijuana. I smoked weed, and then those two incidents occurred. Therefore, those two incidents occurred. Which occurred prior to the other is up in the air.

It is certainly the case that the birth of A.N. (Norman) Prior came before his studies at Otaga University from 1932-35, but most likely came after 1913. If you were to say that his birth year was 1914, then his birth is most definitely > 1913. It will be always true in the future, from the point his mother died forward, that his mother died less than a fortnight after giving birth to him. Why is this? Because, given that we can't go back and change things, if it has always been that sometime in the past a fact occurred, then it will always be the case that this fact occurred. And I can assure you that it has always been the case that his mother did in fact die shortly after giving birth to Arthur Prior. In fact, prior to her death - she gave birth to Arthur Prior.

But all that happened way before he went to college at Otaga University and got his degree in philosophy and psychology. Did he get these degrees before he spent the according time on his education? This is unlikely. Unless he was born with these degrees it is more likely that at the time he finished his education at the university he was given those degree. If he had been born with college degrees, there is no doubt his mother would have been very proud of him. Up until the point she died, of course.

After all this and subsequent further education in Logic, A.N.P. went on to teach at Oxford and develop the foundations of Tense Logic (Temporal Logic). His work follows from Diodorus, and John Findlay but it was Prior who tied it together with the connector of Modal Logic. You could say that if there is all three individuals, then Diodurus would come before Findlay who would come before Prior. If this is true then it must be true that someone, lost to the sands of time, came before Diodorus. It is most certainly not A.N. Prior.

Prior Prior died on October 6th., 1969, whilst on a lecture tour in Scandinavia. Trondheim in Norway, to be exact. He left behind a massive body of work (mainly articles and essays) that was most certainly all written by him < the time of his death.



note: This write-up would have made A.P. smile, I think, and that's why I wrote it the way I did - as a tribute to a brilliant logician. If someone wants to write a more comprehensive or clear biography you should. To whomever put in that nasty little soft-link - do you really think I copy and pasted this albatross from somewhere else? don't be an idiot...

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