Here's a relevant bit:
"When Aristotle looks for a place to begin the investigation of any topic he suggests that we begin with “the opinions of the many or the wise.” This is hardly because those opinions are thought to be infallible. We need not have a mystical view about “the collective wisdom of humanity” to think it sensible to start there. It simply makes more sense than wasting our time with random fanciful or extraordinary views, views that have come out of nowhere and are likely only to lead nowhere, the wild suppositions of impossible happenings: colors that change on a certain date, universes that consist only of sounds or of one object, and so forth. Under the influence of Descartes’s method, these imaginings have been thought to reveal “conceptual boundaries.”