Persevering to publication

Department of Philosophy graduate student Soohyun Ahn’s paper “How Non-Epistemic Values Can Be Epistemically Beneficial in Scientific Classification” was the winner of our 2019 Graduate Essay Prize and has now been accepted for publication in the Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (Part A).

This is Soohyun’s first publication, and the result of significant perseverance over several years. The paper was first developed for a Winter 2016 Topics in Philosophy of Science: Historical Narratives & Historicity course with Dr. Marc Ereshefsky. She is personally very attached to the paper because she was pregnant at the time (and cannot believe her daughter is now old enough to have conversations with her!).

Her conference submissions of the paper were rejected several times, but this only further motivated her to develop, transform and ultimately improve it. It has since been presented at two conferences: the 2018 poster forum of the 26th Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association and as a paper entitled “The Role of Non-Epistemic Values in Scientific Classification” at the 2019 meeting of the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology. It was also accepted for presentation at the 64^th Annual Congress of the Canadian Philosophical Association in early June 2020, but the event itself was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I just never gave up on this paper despite so many hardships” says Soohyun. “This paper represents the growth and change in my life in Calgary.”