Phillip Scribner was born in Denver, Colorado, and reared mostly in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1961 with a major in philosophy, and he received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland) in 1966. After teaching at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln for four years, he taught philosophy at the American University in Washington, D.C. for thirty years. 

He started writing the argument that has become this trilogy in 1975, continued working on it after retiring from teaching in 2000, and completed it in 2022 at the age of 82.