The 18th century view of cosmology was essentially ours, except that it lacked knowledge about how it was organized on a larger scale (galaxies within clusters within superclusters and all that) due to the lack of sufficiently powerful telescopes, and many supposed the universe to be infinite instead of beginning with the Big Bang.
Well… I find it quite a stretch to call the pre-Shapley–Curtis-debate views of cosmology “essentially ours”. (But http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_cosmology did surprise me. Olber’s paradox was first solved by Edgar Allan Poe? I knew he was quite a smart guy, but...)
Well… I find it quite a stretch to call the pre-Shapley–Curtis-debate views of cosmology “essentially ours”. (But http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_cosmology did surprise me. Olber’s paradox was first solved by Edgar Allan Poe? I knew he was quite a smart guy, but...)