How does the scientist retain this mastery over all matters? The answer is a combination of two issues. First of all, due to the solitary nature of the scientist, each one prefers to work on issues on their own. Trying to cooperate would result in loss of status, because the other individual might be better at something (gasp!). After all, isn’t image above all? Better to do your web app for the experiment from scratch, rather than enlist the help of a computer scientist. On another level, the inclusion of additional people would mean a larger group for dividing spoils. You see, publishing a paper just by yourself in The New England Hyperprogressive Journal of Foucauldian Energy Fields is surely better than one in Nature, if in the latter you have to share the spoils with other people. Working alone, you can be the heroic explorer of your dreams. Working together, you’re just a cog in a machine, and nobody will remember your name. Especially if that other one is the first author.
As the night appears, almost nothing changes. Since in daytime everyone would be sitting behind closed doors anyway, just by observation you can’t tell it’s already late. The disappearance of administrative personnel, however, signals the end of the hottest time of day. But if you could see behind those closed doors, you could find many a scientist, still procrastinating profusely. It’s a world of publish or perish, and there’s this critical deadline that you are close to missing (because you just spent two months learning how to do PHP, instead of that conference paper).