In the seventeenth century, Descartes rejected the concept of the vacuum, which is one big thing he got wrong, we say. He believed that an invisible liquid, like a very fine olive oil filled all the empty spaces in the universe, so there was no void anywhere. In his model, planets are carried around by swirling vortices in this fluid. Now, is not this surprisingly close to modern discoveries, like evidence of the presence of dark matter, which resembles Descartes's fluid? Might be more in his theory.
