alt Hacker NewsThis brings to mind the childhood of John Stuart Mill:
- Learned Greek starting age three.
- Was studying Plato at age six.
- Studied Latin starting at age eight.
And more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#Biography
I guess it helps that he had Jeremy Bentham hanging around his house from an early age.
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J.S. Mill's autobiography is a fascinating read. He spends quite a lot of it discussing his early childhood, explaining that in his opinion he was not particularly special, rather, it was his father who pushed him to all those accomplishments. His father sheltered him from other kids so he was not aware that his accomplishments were unusual!
I learned to read at age three or four, I think and I consumed every book I could find, including various math books, old chemistry books, etc. I didn't really understand anything there, but it was just fascinating to me to even touch that knowledge. So I'm a bit skeptic about these stories of children studying Plato.
Learning three languages at an early age is completely unremarkable for millions of people around the world. It's just notable which ones his were.
My daughter spoke four languages at age 3. Not because she is gifted, but because she grew up in an immigrant environment. One language with me, another with my partner who speaks a different mother tongue than I do, and the two local languages where we live.
And this is utterly unremarkable where I live.
When we visit my family (who are all monolingual), they think she is a prodigy.
She’s not. She’s just a normal kid.
His book 'On Liberty' is the subject of a recent In Our Time episode (BBC Radio Four series on the history of ideas) [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002pqnc]. They discuss his childhood and his (apparently very warm) relationship with his father. (Sidenote: first proper In Our Time episode with the new host; he seems fine, but I miss Melvyn Bragg.)
Didnt he went through a major burnout and depression because of that? I remember reading something like that.
And imagine what he could have done if he had done something useful at such a young age!
Unusual to study Latin before Greek. It's usually the other way round.
This was mostly down to enormous pressure from his father, causing him to have a breakdown in his early twenties.
Not to say the results weren't incredible, but certainly required sacrifice.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10378/10378-h/10378-h.htm#li...