My academic interests are varied, but have always included science and mathematics. Initially, I became interested in growing trees and other plants when I was in primary school, which led me to start reading on botany, which in turn led to biology in early high school. But at teh same time, I used to read encyclopaedias, and was fascinated by ancient myths, art, and culture, especially Greek and Roman, but also Chinese and other Asian cultures.
In high-school, my first love was biology, but I wanted to know how cells worked, which led to chemistry, and then I wanted to know why atoms behaved as they did, which led to physics. And all the time my interest in mathematics was growing. Mathematics amazed me because, unlike everything else, the statements, the opinions, of mathematics could be proven to be true. I loved that certainty. Physics was great, but I soon learned from the history of physics that every great idea from the past had eventually been proved false: Aristotle was brilliant, and a great scientist, but his theory that the sun circled the earth was always wrong, although believed by everyone for over 2,000 years.
And then there was philosophy. My mathematics and physics master in high school introduced me to philosophy. He was a Catholic Brother, and I think he worried that I might stop believing in god, so he suggested I read a Christian philosopher. That led me to Plato and a healthy atheism.
Thursday 1 May 2014
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Great, your academic interests are very broad and some of them are close to me. I like to read to an ancient myth, especially Greek and Roman because it’s fascinating. I’m also interested in Mathematics since I really believe that it enables us to think logically. However, your interest in philosophy is far from my interests due to its complexities. By the way, your interests are very interesting.
ReplyDeletep'ball academic interest is unlike me, yet really like yours, particularly philosophy. although my faculty was economics but my really major is public, politics and development economics. so, in order to develop countries fairly, we have to answer some philosophy's questions such as "what is the justice". I have read an interest book, about that question, named "Justice" by Michael Sandel. I do like this book. I recommend this book to you if you are interested in this field. Perhaps, you have read this book?
ReplyDeleteP,
DeleteOne of my Reading and Speaking classes (Tuesday Thursday) has been reading chapters from Harvard University academic Michael Sandel's excellent book Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?" and they seem to love the challenge of exploring these ideas about the fundamental nature of justice and moral concepts. At least, they keep registering for the class term after term, and their backgrounds are very different.
Bank and Pueng, who are now in the Monday Wednesday class for Reading and Speaking, can tell you what it's like, except that last week was a mess because too many students were crowded into a too small room. I think we will be much more comfortable next week now that the the class has split into two.
I also like reading economics. It teaches us a lot about how human beings actually behave, and how theories work out when put into practice. Sometimes ideas that sound good (like communism, rice subsidies, oil subsidies, and the like) turn out to be disasters. But I think that communism is also bad in principle. Actually, I think things like the rice pledging scheme and rubber pledging scheme are morally wrong and have bad effects in practice - even with zero corruption, they are bad ideas, but very popular.
I'm glad to hear that you liked Sandel's book.
That's great. I never read any book about philosophy before like p'ball, I think philosophy is complicated, but if I has a chance it maybe try to read them. Often I read about the Greek and Romans but for unknown reason I feels interested more about "Barbarians" such as Huns and Goths.I am going to buy book about Attila the Huns soon.
ReplyDeleteIt also interested in science like you. I used to like mathematics but after some incident occurred when it was in grade 2 , I stopped interested in math. I was so sad.
I had the academic interest the same as yours when I was in high school. Biology is always my most favorite subject because there are so much mysteries about life that are waiting to be found. I used to go to the bookstore and buy Biology textbooks which I found later that I didn't have enough time to read the whole of it.
ReplyDeleteStill regretted it until today.