I'd just throw in that this idea of universal gravitation coupled with the laws of motion and dodgy ideas like force and momentum enabled a wide range of phenomena to be described and some predictions to be made that could be compared with observations.

Yes, ideas like 'force' and 'momentum' were a bit dubious but the resulting theory was effective[1] within its domain of applicability.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_theory