Philosophy of Astrophysics

1. Introduction (Vera Matarese, Siska De Baerdemaeker, and Nora Mills Boyd).- Part I: Theory, Observation, and the Relation Between Them. 2. Laboratory Astrophysics: Lessons for Epistemology of Astrophysics (Nora Mills Boyd).- 3. A Crack in the Track of the Hubble Constant (Marie Gueguen).- 4. Theory Testing in Gravitational-Wave Astrophysics (Jamee Elder).- 5. Hybrid Enrichment of Theory and Observation in Next-Generation Stellar Population Synthesis (Lydia Patton).- 6. Doing More with Less: Dark Matter & Modified Gravity (Niels C. M. Martens and Martin King).- Part II: Models and Simulations. 7. Stellar Structure Models Revisited: Evidence and Data in Asteroseismology (Mauricio Suárez).- 8. Idealizations in Astrophysical Computer Simulations (Melissa Jacquart and Regy-Null R. Arcadia).- 9. Simulation Verification in Practice (Kevin Kadowaki).- 10. (What) Do We Learn from Code Comparisons? A Case Study of Self-Interacting Dark Matter Implementations (Helen Meskhidze).- 11. Simulation and Experiment Revisited: Temporal Data in Astronomy and Astrophysics (Shannon Sylvie Abelson).- 12. What's In a Survey? Simulation-Induced Selection Effects in Astronomy (Sarah C. Gallagher and Christopher Smeenk).- Part III: Black Holes. 13. On the Epistemology of Observational Black Hole Astrophysics (Juliusz Doboszewski and Dennis Lehmkuhl).- 14. Black Holes and Analogy (Alex Mathie).- 15. Extragalactic Reality Revisited: Astrophysics and Entity Realism (Simon Allzén).- Part IV:  Concluding Thoughts. 16. Reflections by a Theoretical Astrophysicist (Kevin Heng).- 17. Annotated Bibliography (Cameron C. Yetman).

Nora Mills Boyd is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Siena College. Her research focuses on empiricism in philosophy of science, philosophy of experiment, and the philosophy of astrophysics and cosmology. After working as a research engineer at the University of Washington Center for Experimental Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics, she received her PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2018. She has published journal articles in Philosophy of Science and Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics. Her Cambridge University Press Element Epistemology of Experimental Physics was published in the Philosophy of Physics series in 2021.

Siska De Baerdemaeker is a researcher at Stockholm University. Between 2023 and 2025, she will work on a Project Grant from Riksbanken Jubileumsfond on the epistemology of experiment in context of dark matter research. Before, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Richard Dawid on theory confirmation in fundamental physics. She also has research projects on the history of relativistic cosmology in the 1920s and 1930s. In April 2020, she received her PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Her work has been published in Philosophy of Science, Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, and HOPOS. Her Cambridge University Press Element Philosophy of Cosmology and Astrophysics is under contract in the Philosophy of Physics series.

Kevin Heng is Chair Professor (German: Lehrstuhlinhaber) of Theoretical Astrophysics of Extrasolar Planets at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. He is Honorary Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom.  Previously, he was the director of the interdisciplinary Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) at the University of Bern, Switzerland. He is the recipient of a 2017 European Research