Insofar as modelling is a 'predictive' activity
in the engineering sense of useful estimates of observables -- it tends to end in pseudoscience.
Originally the idea of spheres was a good one (and not obtainable via any compression of measurements) -- it was obtained through reasoning by analogy. but when epicycles were added over-and-over, you effectively were using a universal functional approximator to match observable data.
Since the solar system doesn't change much, the epicycle approach works (by coincidence) -- but it's pseudoscience.
A model of gravity which can account for any possible solar system is an explanation, even if it's so hard to use we cannot actually do predictions with it (the status of much science).
