I would say my interest tended to be more about understanding society from the ground up. Which naturally led me to philosophy, but more generally basic physics, because it is evident there are dynamic processes driving and motivating peoples, that are obscured by all the surface chop, cross currents and turmoil. Having grown up in a situation where I could afford to be politically and tribally agnostic, but with a habit of reading lots of history, I was trying to be as objective as possible.

The first clue that even the physics might be caught up in its own social feedback loops, was reading Hawking's, A Brief History of Time, where he made a particular observation, mathematically stated as Omega=1. Basically that the expansion of the universe is in inverse proportion to the sum force of gravity and the effect was a overall flat space. Later apparently verified by the COBE and WMAP satellites.

Now the conventional assumption was that gravity slows the expansion, to the point it reaches overall equilibrium. Presumably upset by the discovery of the need to add Dark Energy, resulting in continuous expansion.

Yet my initial thought was it sound like some cosmic convection cycle, where the space between galaxies is expanding by the same amount space collapses into galaxies and there is no need for the expanding universe. Basically that Hubble discovered evidence of Einstein's original cosmological constant. The balance to keep gravity from collapsing space to a point.

I happened to raise this observation once, back on the old Mysteries of the Universe section of the original NYTimes forums, in the 90's and another commenter pointed out that it didn't have to be some mathematical model of spacetime, simply that what is measured by expansion is radiation and what is measured by collapse is mass and they effectively balance out. He said he'd studied cosmology at the University of Chicago and intended to do his thesis paper on it, but his adviser suggested that if he pursued it, he might want to go into another field, which he did.

It was back in the late 80's, early 90's, as this idea was tumbling around in my head, that it occurred to me the conventional assumption of time, as the point of the present going past to future, could equally be described as the events going future to past, so it boiled down to which was more fundamental, the present, or the events.

Since there is only the present and it's the events that are ephemeral, it seemed we should reconsider time as well.

Sort of like whether the heavens go east to west, or does the earth turn west to east.

Then it settled into the relationship between what we call energy, versus the forms/information being manifest.

Not only does the energy, being conserved, go past to future, as the point of the present, while the information generated goes future to past, as the events, but as biological organisms, we are the organs processing energy and generating appetites and emotions, versus the nervous system sorting through and organizing the information, as well as, back to cosmology, galaxies are energy radiating out/expanding, while the structures generated coalesce in.

So it seems, thermodynamic feedback loops between the element driving us and the forms it manifests and define it.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form, substance and structure go future to past.

As lives go birth to death, future to past, while life moves onto the next generation, shedding the old.