by Chris Cumo

RAMAN SUNDRUM BREATHES easily in the rarefied air of theoretical physics. He is a postdoc at Stanford University where, in collaboration with Princeton physicist Lisa Kendall, he has proposed that Einstein's General Relativity predicts the existence of an extra dimension. We are familiar with space and time, which are really a single dimension according to Einstein, but this extra dimension is infinite and beyond the scope of our senses. If Sundrum is right, we inhabit an infinitely tiny dimension of the universe, where we experience but a fraction of the forces at play in the cosmos. The idea is wild, but that does not matter to Sundrum because he enjoys his work.

Therein lies the problem: most scientists, even those in tenuous postdoctoral positions, are satisfied with the status quo. What adjuncts in the humanities decry as a crisis of underemployment, scientists see as an opportunity for research and publication. Scientists and humanists do not inhabit the same world, C. P. Snow observed in The Two Cultures, and this fact makes rapprochement difficult. Without a shared vision, the job market will continue to frustrate humanists and please scientists.

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