Mike Grimshaw (Sociology) is part of an international team of Arthur Prior scholars who have just published “Three Little Essays: Arthur Prior in 1931” (Aalborg University Press, 2020).
The 3 essays were written when (the noted philosopher) Prior was 16 years old and a student at Wairarapa High school.
The essays are “Essays Literary”; “Essays Religious” & “Essay Scientific”( held in the Bodleian library , Oxford) and “Essays Literary” (150 handwritten pages) which is held in the Macmillan Brown archives at UC, having come into the archives via Prior’s friend John Summers.
Grimshaw has not only participated in the transcription, editing and editorial notes of “Essay Literary”, he also contributed a chapter: “From Flower-Show to ‘Praying Scientist’: the Early Thought of Arthur Prior”.
In this he has (with the help of the Masterton town archivist) identified and located unknown early writings of Arthur Prior, discusses these in the context of Prior’s later thought and also provided an introduction to “Essays Literary”.
The book is available as an open-access ebook via Aalborg University Press.
It is vol. 3 of the series Logic and Philosophy of Time and a 4th issue with a further essay by Grimshaw: The Public Prior: A.N. Prior as (relocated 17th & 18th century) Public Intellectual 1945-1952 is due out in December 2020.
