To be fair to the empiricists, even if they didn't know it, they were inheriting a system of predictions/observations that don't naturally fit together. Kepler's graphic representation of data based on Mars as seen from a moving Earth is still considered geocentric despite Kepler's statement to the contrary -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann...retrograde.jpg

"Copernicus, by attributing a single annual motion to the earth,entirely rids the planets of these extremely intricate coils leading the individual planets into their respective orbits ,quite bare and very nearly circular. In the period of time shown in the diagram, Mars traverses one and the same orbit as many times as the 'garlands' you see looped towards the center,with one extra, making nine times, while at the same time the Earth repeats its circle sixteen times " Johannes Kepler

All these academics this week lecturing students have no idea what constitutes the original reasoning of the first Sun-centred astronomers and why their views were already deficient but not in a fatal way, only that they don't account for the motions of Venus and Mercury and their actual loops of the Sun seen from a slower moving Earth.

Sir Isaac thinks that if you plonk the Sun in the middle of the diagram then retrogrades disappear but that nuclear option which he called absolute/relative space and motion as he assumes observations seen from Earth transform into observations seen from the Sun.

Watching mathematicians flounder around like fish out of water is pathetic regardless of how they appear to the wider world but I have left room open for those with enough common sense to deal with the matter like men instead of fools.