And all I was saying is that some of the various theoretical models under discussion here are more that just "ideas" or simple hypotheses, in that there is a lot of (physical) theoretical "meat" in them. So I was emphasizing that these are not simply mathematical exercises, which your post seemed to imply, but maybe I just misunderstood.

I also concur with KenG, that the scientific process does not flow in such a linear fashion ("theory comes after experiments"). Theoretical models (which are often much more developed than a simple hypotheses) often guide experiment and observation (e.g., they make testable predictions or tell us where/how to look for phenomena), which when done then put the models to the test. Theoretical models often advance way ahead in the vacuum of data. When the data eventually flood in, whole branches of models whither in the bright illumination. Likewise, experiment and observation are often find themselves way ahead of the theoretical development to properly explain the "facts". As progress is made in this hand-in-hand dance-like fashion, a successful scientific theory emerges.

One might argue that General Relativity was a theory developed without any data but one - this lone exception being the unexplained part of the precession of the perihelion of Mercury. However, to the best of my knowledge, that is not the reason Einstein pursued it, but rather it was "forced on us" by what else we (thought we) knew to be true about the world. It made many testable predictions, many of which are only recently being tested.

And to quibble a bit more, "scientific theories" are not considered to be nor do they become "facts". "Facts" are the data, the observations of nature (albeit, some level of interpretation is involved in these "facts"). Theories are models of the natural world that explain these "facts" and predict phenomena, including (and especially) those yet undiscovered. (Caveat emptor - theories or models that are explicitly/specifically constructed to explain a certain "fact" cannot then use their prediction of that fact to claim validity. I'm sure there is a better way to say that.)