[thethirdone]

I am a bit confused by your comment. I'm not sure if you agree with gliop or not. I am simply saying that Newtonian gravity is useful (in pretty much any sense) and that it did not match all experiments. Particularly in the orbit of Mercury could not be explained.

> Even flat-earth theory makes useful predictions - albeit already proven false as time and time again, it predicts the wrong results.

I definitely agree usefulness is independent of fitting experimental data. gliop would seem to say flat earth theories are not useful.

[noego]

I don't think the value of a theory can be evaluated in isolation. It can only be evaluated relative to its competition. During its time, Newtonian gravity, even if it didn't perfectly fit all data, was still superior to its competition on an aggregate of the 3 criteria mentioned. Only once Einstein's theories were put forward, were we able to replace Newtonian gravity with a superior alternative.