Peter's academic interests

Although I began studying a science degree at university, my final major as philosophy. This had been a strong interest from my last years at high school, when one of my Catholic brother teachers had introduce me to it. He was also my maths and physics teachers, and I think he thought that I might in danger of deciding that our religion was false or worse. He suggested I read Soren Kierkegaard, a modern Christian philosopher. I did that. But then I was hooked so read a lot more, from Plato through to Kant. This did not help to keep my Catholic faith. At university, my main areas of interest in philosophy were logic and ethics, or moral philosophy, and I continue to be interested in these today.

Logic is the backbone not only of philosophy, but also of mathematics, which was my real passion in high school. I loved it because unlike every subject, mathematics gave us absolutely certain results that were certain. Pythagoras's theorem is provable in ways that no theory of physics is, and the discoveries of historians are even more prone to later correction. I was also passionate about physics in high school, and mathematics and physics, especially theoretical physics, were what I began studying at university. But I then changed to an arts degree so that I could pursue philosophy. I continued with the mathematics throughout my undergraduate career, but instead of sciences, I took up a couple of dead languages. These did not have any obvious career opportunities, but I loved them.

These days, I also like reading economics, psychology and politics, and I often have passing interests in other fields, such as art. For a year or so, I pursued drawing, which was fascinating, but it required more time and effort than I could afford to give it, although I keep thinking it would be worth doing because I found that drawing was kind of like a form of meditation. Music is another academic interest that really died some years ago. I used to play the flute, which I loved, but unfortunately, playing an instrument also takes regular practice, and my other interests won the competition for my time. These days, I enjoy listening to music, but I suspect that if I picked up my old flute, which is still somewhere in my mother's home, I wouldn't be able to produce notes over more than one octave, and that probably wouldn't be very good either.