From A-time to B-time: Prior's journey there and back again

A.N. Prior developed his famous tense-logical paradigm during a period of 15 years (1954-1969). However, it turns out that this work was done under the influence of a long struggle with scientific, philosophical and theological problems regarding time and reality. During his childhood, it was generally taken for granted that we can to some extent make free choices. However, when Prior was16 years old he wrote three booklets in which he rejected free-will and defended a kind of determinism related to the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination. He held on to this view for almost two decades, although he went through periods of doubt during which he felt that his world-view was challenged. In 1954 he finally left determinism and embraced a tense-logical account of indeterminism, presentism and change. In terms of McTaggart’s A- and B-series this means that Prior as a teenager left the A-theoretical approach to time and reality which had dominated his childhood, and furthermore that after several years as a B-theorist he returned to a logically elaborated A-theory of time and reality. Prior’s long metaphysical journey made it possible for him to suggest a tense-logical paradigm that reaches far beyond his own models and theories.