Peter's Academic Interests

My first academic sort of interest was probably botany, although I didn't know that word when I was ten years old. I used to like growing trees and things in pots. My first was little coral trees, which were very easy to grow - just stick a seed in some soil and they grew quickly, but the trees I really liked were the figs and oaks around my family home in teh country. These were much more challenging, and my pride and joy for many years was a fig tree seedling that I grew. It is now a very large tree at my mother's home.

When I got to high school, I learnt about science, and that became my love. I'd enjoyed reading in primary school, but didn't much enjoy school. Rather, I enjoyed school OK, but I didn't find anything we studied very exciting. At high school, that changed. I loved science. First biology, but over teh years, my interests changed from biology to chemistry to physics and finally mathematics. For the last years at high school, I spend much of my free time studying mathematics (I was a bit of nerd). And I continued studying mathematics at university.

however, whilst at high school, I'd also become interested in philosophy, and in the end, that is what I chose as my major at university, specializing in logic and moral philosophy. These days, I still read in both of these areas, and they have also led me to pursue interests in economics, history, psychology and other fields that relate to my primary areas of interest. Why philosophy? I think initially what attracted me was the promise of answers to the questions that I guess most people sometimes think of. Unfortunately, it's hard to come by answers, but I've never lost my interest in philosophy and continue to read new work in the field.