Arthur Prior's Early Thoughts on Physics and Cosmology

Arthur Prior’s Essays Scientific (1931c) is a handwritten booklet in which he explained key ideas of post-Newtonian physics for the ‘enquiring lay-man’. After some preliminary remarks, I sketch the contents of the two essays, On Relativity and Sweet Nothings that make up the booklet. I then discuss how certain themes important in Prior’s later career (notably A-series versus B-series accounts of time, and whether the order of events is observer independent) are prefigured in this booklet. I then take a close look at Prior’s use of diagrams to present special relativity, and close with some remarks on the editing.