does it matter whether you have a heliocentric or a geocentric worldview when using this method?
Even Copernicus was not really that concerned with cosmology: he was showing an alternative to Ptolemy based on the heliocentric view of what he thought was the universe (now known to be the solar system).
In my view it was Galileo who really first proposed that these models went beyond prediction to describe the reality of the cosmos.
Don't quote me on this, though :)
I'd imagine it's similar looking at the sky. If you "knew" the motion of the planets was related to some Gods moving around, you might expect that circular motion was just a model there too.