The need to draw upon multiple branches of knowledge
According to my diary, I was in Nimes on the 20th of July, 1844.
I conceived the initial idea of taking up the study of urbanization.
I tried to find out whether anything had been written on this subject and, finding that nothing had been done, it occurred to me that I might undertake it.
However, before deciding, I wished to gauge the scope of what I was taking on. I realised that in order to carry this out as I should, I should first have to find out everything that had been written on architecture from Vitruvius to Leonce Reynaud; everything said on law from Solon to Bentham; everything uttered on social studies from Plato to Proudhon; everything said of health from Hippocrates to our times; everything written on statistics from Moses to the present, on geography from…to…; on administration from…to…; of politics from…to…; of morality and religion from…to…; of political economy from…to…; in philosophy from…to…; etc., etc.
Faced with the prospect of such vast and broad-ranging labours, I confess that I was tempted to turn back; however, the fact that I was only 27 years old and the reflection that there would be no need to study everything under the headings mentioned above as a specialist might, but only that part of each that had some bearing on the special work I intended, encouraged me to persevere in my original intention. And so with no hesitation, from that moment onwards, I raised it to the highest rank, ultimate, definitive, and irrevocable.
To unravel it all, I started by gathering isolated, individual and case-specific facts in all these areas, however they might arise, opening for each one a special file or folder.
When all these files were crammed with material they were sorted to see if some law could be deduced as to their existence and their functioning. Once one or other had been identified, a theory was established which was then carefully applied to such cases as had arisen or might arise, to see whether it was appropriately relevant to each, in which case we then gave the theory the status of a science which, since it had been derived from facts, we did not hesitate to call an exact science.
-Ildefonso Cerda, 1875
