This is an interesting analogy and it is one that some philosophers of science (e.g. Ronald Giere) have developed. It captures the idea that scientific theories represent the world by naming its objects and relations. But it is just an analogy, and like all analogies, the similarities only go so far. The map analogy is good for illustrating how theories can be partial and not complete e.g. a map of the London Underground is partial, revealing topological relationships but not distances, and likewise classical thermodynamics reveals temperature/pressure/volume relationships but not magnetic forces. The map analogy is less good for understanding the success of theories in quantum mechanics and particle physics, where theories are valued for their predictive power but not necessarily for their representativeness. Maps are also more complicated than is assumed in the analogy: for example, different projections of 3D structures into 2D (e.g. the different projections of the earth's surface) may...

This is an interesting analogy and it is one that some philosophers of science (e.g. Ronald Giere) have developed. It captures the idea that scientific theories represent the world by naming its objects and relations. But it is just an analogy, and like all analogies, the similarities only go so far. The map analogy is good for illustrating how theories can be partial and not complete e.g. a map of the London Underground is partial, revealing topological relationships but not distances, and likewise classical thermodynamics reveals temperature/pressure/volume relationships but not magnetic forces. The map analogy is less good for understanding the success of theories in quantum mechanics and particle physics, where theories are valued for their predictive power but not necessarily for their representativeness. Maps are also more complicated than is assumed in the analogy: for example, different projections of 3D structures into 2D (e.g. the different projections of the earth's surface) may...

I don't know of any scientist who takes astrology seriously. There are two problems with astrology (1) the lack of confirmatory evidence and (2) the implausibility of the theory, given what else we know about the universe. But your question asked whether there are "modern philosophers" who take astrology seriously. Depending on how broadly the community of philosophers is defined, there may well be philosophers who take astrology seriously. You might be able to find a scientist or two, also. However, I doubt that there are scientists seriously working in the area of astrology (making predictions and testing them).

You are asking a few questions here. One is whether you should take it on trust (or authority) that scientists are in agreement on a scientific questions such as global warming. Another is whether or not assessing scientific evidence is "simple" (and I think you are right in suggesting that it is not simple). And a third is whether or not science is "objective" (a complicated question that philosophers of science, as well as scientists, often debate). A final question you may be asking is whether physics or climate science is more "objective" or "simpler" than psychology or other social sciences, again a complicated question that there is no general agreement on.

It is a good argument only when there is reason to think that the experimental situation may be different in some relevant ways from the natural situation. So, for example, tests of nuclear bombs in desert areas or underground yield results that DO apply to the real world. Tests of drugs in vitro (in the test tube) may not apply in the "real world" of living organisms (in vivo). Nancy Cartwright is a philosopher of science who has written extensively about these issues.

Since the Scientific Revolution, scientists have valued the combination of natural science and mathematics. Quantification (measurement) is valued in part because it contributes to precision in making predictions or interventions. The more precise a prediction that is made, the more confirmed a theory is if it the prediction is verified. That said, sometimes the preference for using numbers is valued in itself, or for the aesthetic pleasure it provides some people. And I think you are right to suggest that this may be a "bias" in that it may lead to devaluing sciences that are not, and perhaps cannot be, quantitative.

Usually when we ask a question about what caused something, we are engaged in trying to repeat or avoid the same situation, or trying to assign blame and responsibility. So although events have many causes, only a few or one of them may be relevant in a particular context. If I disregard instructions to quarantine myself and infect you with the TB bacillus, then one of the things we might say is that the cause of your getting TB is my irresponsibility. (It would not be helpful to say that the cause of your getting TB was the TB bacillus, or even that the cause was my cough.)

You are right that scientific laws cannot be deduced from experiment. They can't be deduced a priori (from pure reason) either. Deduction is only one form of inference, however. Usually both induction (generalization) and abduction (inference to the best explanation) are used in science. Induction and abduction are more fallible than deduction. Although scientific theories can be confirmed and disconfirmed, they can't be proven deductively like a theorem in mathematics.

Many concepts in science are at least in part socially constructed. That does not mean that the world is socially constructed, just that our concepts about the world are devised by scientific communities. "Planet" is one of those terms that is partially socially constructed. Over the last 5 years that social construction has become visible in the debate over Pluto's status. "Planet" was first used to mean "object revolving around the sun." But then all kinds of small objects--comets and meteorites--also revolve around the sun, and the decision was made not to call them all planets, but only to call the sizeable ones planets. "Sizeable" reflects our interests as Earth inhabitants in revolving objects of about the same size as we are. But then in the late twentieth century thousands of celestial bodies of the same size or larger than Pluto were found in the Kuiper belt. Scientists could have decided to call them all planets, so that we would have thousands of planets in the solar system,...

You ask a good question that I have wondered about myself. The classic examples of immoral work in science are Nazi experiments on human physiology and the Tuskegee syphilis study. Neither were up to current methodological standards, but both were OK science for their time. In a way it would be more convenient if these cases would be bad science as well as immoral science, because then no questions need be asked about whether it is permissable to use the results. Perhaps it is difficult to acknowledge that science can be used successfully in ways that are immoral. But I think we learned this lesson with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This is an excellent question. Science aims for both objectivity and truth. Sometimes science fails to be objective (for example, when scientists ignore important evidence, or lack evidence) and sometimes scientific theories fail to be true (for example, Newtonian mechanics turns out not to be true from an Einsteinian perspective) but lack of objectivity is different from falsity. Now let's turn to your case of reasoning about ghosts. If a person has an experience that seems to be due to the supernatural" then that experience is deserving of scientific explanation. In a society with less scientific knowledge than ours, the explanation might be that the cause of the experience is a ghost. That explanation would be incorrect, but not lacking in objectivity (the people in that society are reasoning objectively, given their beliefs and their evidence). The "supernatural" is not automatically "unscientific;" in fact what we count as supernatural changes as science changes. Newton, for example, used...