Some people mistakenly believe that since we do not have direct access to the distant past we cannot learn much about it. Contemporary historians and archaeologists find current geography, geology, and climate to be rich in clues about a given region' s distant history. However, the more distant the period we are studying is, the less useful the study of the present becomes.
The statement 'We often extrapolate from ordinary sensory experience to things beyond such experience and form a rash judgment, such as the claim that the earth is the center of the universe because it appears that way to us' most closely conforms to the principle that the passage illustrates.