Thomas John Hastings, JICUF Senior Research Fellow in Science & Religion, has been busy this past year organizing an academic conference and completing a book on Kagawa Toyohiko.

The conference, titled “The Presence and Future of Humanity in the Cosmos: Why Society Needs Both the Sciences & the Humanities,” will be held on the ICU campus from March 18-23, 2015 and bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars from China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. There will also be two events open to the public, a lecture by Dr. Willem B. Drees, a Dutch philosopher of science, and a film and interview featuring Fujimura Makoto, award-winning Nihonga artist. The conference is being co-sponsored and supported by the JICUF and ICU’s Institute for Christianity & Culture, where Hastings is also a Research Fellow, with additional funding from the John Templeton Foundation, the Niwano Peace Foundation, the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, the Wesley Foundation, and Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science. Please click here for the conference homepage.

Hastings has also just published a new book with Pickwick (Wipf & Stock) titled Seeing All Things Whole: The Scientific Mysticism and Art of Kagawa Toyohiko (1888-1960) (Foreword by J. Wentzel van Huyssteen). Please click here to learn more about this book, which goes a long way toward explaining Kagawa’s final book, Cosmic Purpose (1958), that appeared in English translation in March, 2014.

Dr. Hastings received a three-year grant from the John Templeton Foundation to support his Kagawa research, to organize this conference, and to assist Japanese universities in preparing research proposals.