Stories of the Street - Twenty Nine

Two older boys are discussing what they watched on TV the night before. They are obsessed by science and while one of them plans to go to university to study physics the other has his heart set on biochemistry. Their world views are deeply coloured by these subjects and they constantly argue from their own particular standpoints.

Harry, the older boy by two weeks and one day, favours physics and argues that everything can be explained by looking at the very building blocks of the universe and working your way up. He is arguing from the reductionist viewpoint as described in the documentary programme. Ed believes in the emergent approach which suggests that things cannot be explained solely by extrapolating from the component parts as the rules change when you add complexity to the system.

This is an argument they have had before and the documentary programme was more disappointing to them than it was enlightening, giving them a different type of fuel to add to their respective fires. The mistakes and fudges of the programme makers are used to denigrate the other’s argument and the missing pieces they know about are introduced as their clinching evidence in the debate.

They both see themselves as Nobel Prize winning scientists and believe that their discussions show that they are not mere school students but brilliant scholars.

However, it does not stop them from jointly lusting over the unbelievably desirable body of Antonia Newell from the lower sixth. She may be a year younger than them but her appearance, body language and activities set her apart from them and constantly remind them that they are, what so many of their fellow school students claim them to be. They are, the school geeks.

But even geeks have their fantasies.