Issues and Prospects of Valuation Science

This introductory contribution indicates some of the main prospects of the SIEV 2019 Conference held at the Syracuse campus of the University of Catania (Italy), addressed to the relationship between the fundamentals of the science of evaluations that inspire the main issues with respect to which scholars and experts delimit and characterise their civil commitment in research, education, and field activity. The paper is divided into four sections. The first provides some reference points on the importance of value judgement in terms of the (linguistic and ethical) categories it coordinates, and thus the constitutive capacity it assumes in the reform of the home-city-landscape system, starting from a reconsideration of the foundations of the science of evaluation. The second proposes a comparison, and possible convergence, between two different ways—one “conservative”, the other “progressive”—of conceiving the interdisciplinary nature of valuation science in the prospect of its enrichment and progressive adaptation to the challenges of contemporaneity. The third section proposes the philosophical arguments underlying one of the main issues of the science of value and valuations, the search for a unique value substance, in this case beauty, capable of subsuming the entire spectrum of the authentic values that specify it and constitute the primary reference of valuations. The fourth section concludes this contribution by indicating—starting from some assumptions of project epistemology—not only the role of evaluation, but also the potentialities and responsibilities that in the synthesis of evaluators’ and designers’ expertise characterise the commitment to the formation of orderly and flourishing communities.