From about the time of Isaac Newton to that of James Clerk Maxwell they had been dormant, in the sense that the physical sciences could rely on the status of the real numbers as a description of the continuum, and an agnostic view of atoms and their structure.
Newtonian mechanics can answer the question, whether it is not equally the case that the Sun goes round the Earth, as it indeed appears to Earth-based astronomers.
To avoid going against authority, the elliptic orbits of the heliocentric model could be labelled as a more convenient device for calculations, rather than an actual description of reality.
His attitude, adopted by many theoretical physicists, is that a good model is judged by our capacity to use it to calculate physical quantities that can be tested experimentally.
He wrote an extended analysis of the approach he saw as characteristically British, in requiring field theories of theoretical physics to have a mechanical-physical interpretation.
In addition to the Copernican Revolution debate of "saving the phenomena" (Greek: σῴζειν τὰ φαινόμενα, sozein ta phainomena[3])[4][5] versus offering explanations[6] that inspired Duhem was Thomas Aquinas, who wrote, regarding eccentrics and epicycles, that Reason may be employed in two ways to establish a point: firstly, for the purpose of furnishing sufficient proof of some principle [...].
Reason is employed in another way, not as furnishing a sufficient proof of a principle, but as confirming an already established principle, by showing the congruity of its results, as in astronomy the theory of eccentrics and epicycles is considered as established, because thereby the sensible appearances of the heavenly movements can be explained (possunt salvari apparentia sensibilia); not, however, as if this proof were sufficient, forasmuch as some other theory might explain them.