Reminds me of Alan Kay's frequently mentioned nugget about Kepler, that he waited for years to try and fit orbits to ellipsis, because, being so close to circles and ovals, surely all the people doing this stuff before had tried ellipsis, and found them wanting? (No, they hadn't).
I've been lead to understand that some issues may have been before Tycho Brahe no one had made accurate measurements, especially of the entire tracks across the sky, not just 'interesting' places.
"Kepler realized that Tycho's work could settle the question one way or the other, so he went to work with Tycho in 1600. Tycho died the next year, Kepler stole[sic] the data, and worked with it for nine years.
He reluctantly concluded that his geometric scheme was wrong. In its place, he found his three laws of planetary motion"
