Im about to jump in the shower, son cant go inti detail. Just that the best theories in physics, our best foundations, were not made by an incremental tic-toc theory-experiment cycle. There were bursts of genius that eventually got proven.

Im reading Truesdell's (America's greatest 20th century physicist?) book now where he goes through the history of fluid mechanics and the paucity of experiments. If I remember ill send you the reference