The research as a decision-making process A viable system’s perspective

Abstract

The human being and its relation to the territory is symbiotically related to the evolution process. During the evolution, humans, like other species too, have always been in search for survival as an ultimate goal to conserve the viability of the system (i.e., the belonging class). Therefore, individuals are viable systems which aim the finality of survival through a dynamic equilibrium and homeostatic processes with supra-systems and subsystems with which they attempt to ensure states of consonance (structural compatibility) and resonance (systemic interaction) (Barile et al., 2019; Beer, 1985). To do so, they must decide and act, while searching for meaning that is their subjective perception on problems1 and opportunities. The search for meaning is a natural tendency of human beings as they are inclined to attenuate the environmental entropy by giving a sense to the stimuli of the surrounding context, going from a composition of parts towards the whole. In research, the measurement of meaning has been performed through the well-known scale of semantic differential, usually a 7-point scale of semantic values that describes an attribute or a person’s attitude towards something (Osgood et al., 1957). Consequently, the individual behaves as an observing system, filtering information and constructing its own “invented reality” (von Foerster, 2003; Watzalick, 1984). In the field of architecture, environment, and territorial planning, the attitudes of the observer – which might be an academic researcher, an entrepreneur, a policy maker, or even the whole society – towards the territory and its ecosystem components are of a fundamental importance (Swanwick, 2009; Foroudi et al., 2020; Khandan and Rezaei, 2022).