At the time Newton wrote 'Principia', the question of whether the sun orbited the Earth or vice versa was wide open. Calculus closed the question. Newton's predictions of the motion of the planets was so much better than anything else it was unquestionable.
Newton knew he was on to something good. He also knew the issue of which orbit was extremely controversial. He chose to address the controversy head on, in an ingenious way.
"Hypotheses non fingo", Newton wrote, 'I feign no hypotheses'. Newton didn't even pretend to explain what gravity was. He just found a hella excellent way to describe it.
Newton's description was so good, other people were able to milk it for insight for 250 years. But it was only able to gain traction in the first place because he admitted he couldn't talk about such a large part of it. Ever since, we have the 'how' in droves, we're drowning in 'how', but we're starving for 'why?'.
Newton called his approach 'experimental philosophy': "In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction."
Or as I like to tell junior developers, over and over: prove it. Don't tell me about why something is behaving a particular way, find a way to show me. A demonstration is like an experiment: if it doesn't have the possibility of failure, it's fake.
There are facts, based on demonstrations, and there are feelings. But feelings have hella influence on the interpretation of demonstrations, the judgement of fakeness. Turns out facts and feelings overlap pretty significantly. Changing one requires changing the other.
The most important thing you can say: "I don't know." Anything has to start with admitting you don't know everything.