Is There a Future for Astronomy?

Osiander seemed to be saying that the diagrams and calculations of mathematical astronomy are to be taken in a merely instrumental sense. They should be used as tools to do things like predicting the position of a planet on a given night, while keeping an open mind about what is really going on up there. A more technical reason would be that multiple inconsistent models might all be compatible with what we observe. In such a case, there would be no basis for choosing one model over another.