Therme Group is pleased to announce that Christopher Willard-Kyle, alongside his co-author Timothy Kearl, has won the Young Epistemologist Prize 2024 for their paper Epistemic Cans. The Young Epistemologist Prize is the most prestigious prize in epistemology worldwide.

Based in the Cogito Epistemology Research Centre, University of Glasgow, Christopher is research fellow on the ‘Dimensions of Wellbeing’ research project (Principal Investigators: Professors Mona Simion and Christoph Kelp), developed by Therme Group and the University, exploring the scientific and philosophical dimensions of wellbeing. The COGITO partnership is part of an initiative by Therme Group to collaborate with world-leading academic institutions.

Findings from the research will be implemented across Therme Group facilities globally, enhancing the creation of environments tailored to optimize guest wellbeing.

As an introduction to Epistemic Cans, Mona Simion, Director of COGITO explained: "We are knowers—we have the (epistemic) ability to know things. And we are doers—we have the (practical) ability to do things. Philosophers disagree about how these two kinds of agency—our epistemic agency and our practical agency—are related. How (if at all) is our agency as knowers connected to our agency as doers? Our paper argues that our ability to know things is a species of our ability to do things. In other words, what we are in a position to know, depends on what we are in a position to do."

Therme Group would like to offer Dr Willard-Kyle our congratulations on a wonderful achievement.

The full paper of Epistemic Cans is available to download here.