![Artist's impression of stars springing up out of darkness - NASA/JPL-Caltech, 2006 (CCBY 3.0) Artist's impression of stars springing up out of the darkness (courtesy of NASA/ Caltech)](https://www.interfaith.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.interfaith.cam.ac.uk/files/styles/leading/public/3-stars-spring-out-of-the-darkness-credit-nasa-jpl-caltech-885x432px_ccby3.jpg?itok=JHhccg9Q)
Communication and its limits
Dr Tim Jenkins (University of Cambridge)
Abstract: I have two aims in this paper. The first is to draw attention to the history of the term ‘communication’ and to reflect on some difficulties contained in this apparently self-evident term. The second is to offer some examples of the work done by the idea of communication, drawn from the ambition to contact other, alien, races – so, instances of interplanetary exchanges of information or ‘first contact’.
A subsidiary concern is that such an investigation may be of interest to a seminar dedicated to matters of interactions between faiths, because models based on the idea of communication, whether conceived as exchanges of information or as a basis for therapeutic repair and peace-making, will be familiar territory.
Part of the Inter-Religious Relations seminar.
The featured image is part of a sequence created in 2006, reproduced here under a Creative Commons license (BY 3.0), courtesy of its originators (NASA / JPL-Caltech). View the original image in NASA's collection.