Peter's academic interests

My academic interests began when i was in primary school, although I didn't know they were academic then; they were just things that interested me. I grew up on a farm, and from around five or six years, I loved growing things. This interest was really good for me because it pushed my to learn to read so that I could learn more. Happily, my Catholic primary school was very supportive. I had nuns teaching me in primary school, and they were very old. Because they were old and a bit tired most of the time, they let us do what we wanted as long as it looked productive, so I spent a lot of time pursuing my own interests in the library. At first, i loved botany to help me grow a bigger range of trees and things, then I was interested in biology generally, and by the time I got to high school, I was in love with chemistry, but in first year at high school, I found physics and mathematics. There were my main passions until the end of high school.

In my second last year, the brother who was my maths and physics teacher, and also my religion teachers, introduced me to philosophy. I'm now sure why. Perhaps he thought that my interest in science would lead me away from religion, so he suggested a Christian philosopher for me to read. Although I enjoyed Kierkegaard, he led my to read a lot more philosophy, and that quickly destroyed my belief in gods, angels, devils, and the like. I suspect this was not what my kind teacher had planned.

At university, I continued studying mathematics and physics, but philosophy was my major, with a couple of dead languages for variety.

These days, i also like reading history and economics, although I've never studied this subjects at university. I like the way economists use their tools, such as statistical analysis, to help us understand how human beings behave and why we do what we do.