On an evolutionary timeline of the science of astronomy, the modern age begins in the middle of the 17th century, with Newton's theory of universal gravitation. The era was propagated by the Renaissance, during which time new tools were invented and applied to astronomical observation and models of a very different type were first constructed to explore the physical principles governing the movement of the planets. The changes propelled the discipline into a new world of information and knowledge. Tracing the history of theories and models of the solar system, Bower asserted that most published descriptions of biological mechanisms are folkloric in nature, and therefore can not contribute to a scientific investigation of biological systems.
Scientific progress requires the construction of quantitative models of the systems under study.
Prior to the Renaissance, Aristotelian-type models of planetary movement, capable of replicating observations of planetary movement in great detail, had been built, but were constructed based on preordained assumptions concerning the nature of physical reality. In principle, models of this type are no t falsifiable. In many cases, these models initially did a poorer job than the models they replaced in predicting the positions of planets in the sky, but the fact that they were physically realistic meant that Newton, for example, could use a model to extract the inverse square law of gravitational attraction. In his talk, Bower proposed that the parallel to current biological theory and modeling is that, once again, the focus is on replicating the observational data without making sure first that the models reflect the physical structure of the system under study. In many cases, models are constructed after the theorist already believes they understand how the system works.