Conceded, but only because the specific mechanics of the Counter-Earth proposal were rather far-fetched.
In Classical times, so little was known about the actual mechanics underlying natural phenomena that an emphasis on fitting those phenomena into mathematical symmetries would be productive, even if there were some holes in the data. There simply wasn’t that much rigorous data to study, and even fewer well-understood analytical tools to do it with, so I’d expect some real symmetries to look awkward in practice thanks to sampling bias. I think the Greek philosophers had some idea of this, too.
Conceded, but only because the specific mechanics of the Counter-Earth proposal were rather far-fetched.
In Classical times, so little was known about the actual mechanics underlying natural phenomena that an emphasis on fitting those phenomena into mathematical symmetries would be productive, even if there were some holes in the data. There simply wasn’t that much rigorous data to study, and even fewer well-understood analytical tools to do it with, so I’d expect some real symmetries to look awkward in practice thanks to sampling bias. I think the Greek philosophers had some idea of this, too.