Those theories, or concepts, have been around for a long long time, and were not figured out using the scientific process. Isaac Newton, for example, is generally considered not to be a scientist, but a "natural philosopher", to the extent terms matter, because he did not use, nor was he aware of the scientific method. The same is true for Copernicus, who was clearly not a scientists.
The Egyptians long before either had figured out that the Earth was spherical and approximated its diameter remarkably accurately. The geocentric model held sway mostly because of Aristotle, who obviously had great weight.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/OrbitsHistory/page1.phpAt times, a person like an Aristotle or Newton carry such weight that their ideas suppress consideration of alternatives for a long time. Newton for example did not advocate the wave nature of light and folks who followed tended to be heavily swayed by his bias. This likely delayed the acceptance that light has wave properties.
https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/thomas-young-and-the-wave-nature-of-light/And of course this duality of properties, wave versus particles, later coalesced into something else rather important, yet another major theory in science that has not really been proven in the normal sense of the term.
Scientific theories get tested, not proved. (In science, to prove means to test.)
