The Trouble with Science

The trouble with Science is that it is done by scientists. The troubles with scientists is that they are human beings. The trouble with human beings is that they are inquisitive. And the trouble with being inquisitive is that nothing but the answer will end the quest.

Jason Nichols, the Elder, travels back in time to prevent the discovery that would ultimately lead to his being able to travel back in time to prevent the discovery.

The question of whether this is possible is not just a science question. ‘Synchrony’ only dips its toes in the very edge of this vast ocean that is the question of time travel. At the end of the episode, after elder Jason has incinerated his younger self, uttering the words, “It’s better that we never were,” only one body is found. Scully asks Mulder, “You find the second corpse?” To which Mulder replies, “No, and I’m not holding out much hope that they will, either.” When the younger Jason dies the older ceases to ever have existed and so no body is found.

If elder Jason ceases to exist upon the death of younger Jason then how is there an elder Jason to come back in time in the first place. Positing alternative time-lines doesn’t work because if elder Jason continues to exist in some alternative future, murdering younger Jason only changes the future in one possible time-line – and not the one that elder Jason came back from, making his one-way trip futile.

All this prospecting in the shifting, whispering sands of paradox isn’t really the question at hand, as it really isn’t in ‘Synchrony’.

Science deals with the physical world, it is, in the words of Richard Dawkins, “the poetry of reality”. There are questions that can be asked about the nature of the physical world in which we live and there are those who dedicate their lives to finding answers to these questions. They construct grand theories, built upon layers of inquiry, experiment, and speculation and lay claim to ‘facts’ so as to discourage contrary pathways to knowledge.

Dawkins’ own words prove the lie to this. Poetry, if it is like science at all, is only akin to the reading of the data from which the theory is born. Once science establishes ‘fact’, as it claims to do, it breaks with poetry, for the latter is always open to interpretation, by definition prone to multivalences. If science really were poetry, it would be ‘consciousness raising” precisely as is poetry – and literature – and, of all things, TV, making Dawkins' criticism of The X Files as nonsensical as much else he says.

But Dawkins does demonstrate an aspect of the scientist relevant to our discussion. Dawkins is, if nothing else, tenacious; sticking to his two arguments come hell or high water.

Lisa Ianelli portrays this characteristic of the scientist in ‘Synchrony’. She is presented with the consequences of her research in a way few scientists ever are, people have died horribly, including Lisa herself, yet, after all that, by episode end, she is back working on the very compound that lies at the very heart of all that has happened.

It is this aspect of science that should scare us. It is purely immoral. It shows no regard for consequences. Those scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project knew full well the devastation their work would wreak upon the world, but the science pays no heed to the human. For science to be successful, it must strive for objectivity. The subjective is prone to error and is the ‘real’ nature of humanity. To strive for objectivity is to claim, if only in a limited way, infallibility, a concept Dawkins ridicules. It is this shedding of the scientist’s humanity that enables the pursuit of knowledge regardless of consequences.

Even if Jason Nichols the Elder had succeeded in his mission, that of preventing his younger self from developing the compound that will eventually make time travel possible, he would still have failed. After finding Dr. Yonechi frozen in his hotel room, Scully suggests that the younger Jason Nichols is eliminating his competition because science is a “high-stakes game”. Mulder isn’t convinced. Scully points out what she takes to be the obvious, “He’s a cryobiologist. He freezes things for a living.” Then asks, “How many people can do that?” “Just about anybody up for that grant money could,” Mulder rejoins.

In other words, there are others working in a field similar to the one in which Jason Nichols works. Meaning that, though it might take longer, it is likely that some kind of solution to the rapid freezing conundrum will be found. Elder Jason Nichols is doomed to fail, even if he succeeds, because he can only kill off the scientists, he cannot kill off the science.

Once the question has been asked, the answer will be pursued no matter the cost in lives, no matter the cost to the future.