A worldview or world-view or ''Weltanschauung'' is the fundamental
cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's
knowledge
Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distin ...
,
culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...
, and
point of view.
A worldview can include
natural philosophy
Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe. It was dominant before the development of modern science.
From the ancien ...
; fundamental, existential, and
normative postulates; or themes, values, emotions, and ethics.
Etymology
The term ''worldview'' is a
calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...
of the German word ''
Weltanschauung'' , composed of ''
Welt'' ('world') and ''
Anschauung'' ('perception' or 'view'). The German word is also used in English. It is a concept fundamental to
German philosophy, especially
epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Epi ...
and refers to a ''wide world perception''. Additionally, it refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs forming a global description through which an individual, group or culture watches and interprets the
world and interacts with it as a
social reality.
''Weltanschauung'' and cognitive philosophy
Within
cognitive philosophy and the
cognitive sciences is the German concept of ''Weltanschauung''. This expression is used to refer to the "wide worldview" or "wide world perception" of a people, family, or person. The ''Weltanschauung'' of a people originates from the unique world experience of a people, which they experience over several millennia. The
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
of a people reflects the ''Weltanschauung'' of that people in the form of its
syntactic structures and untranslatable
connotations and its
denotations.
The term ''Weltanschauung'' is often wrongly attributed to
Wilhelm von Humboldt, the founder of German
ethnolinguistics. However, Humboldt's key concept was ''Weltansicht''.
''Weltansicht'' was used by Humboldt to refer to the overarching conceptual and sensorial apprehension of reality shared by a linguistic community (Nation). On the other hand, ''Weltanschauung'', first used by
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
and later popularized by Hegel, was always used in German and later in English to refer more to philosophies, ideologies and cultural or religious perspectives, than to linguistic communities and their mode of apprehending reality.
In 1911, the German philosopher
Wilhelm Dilthey published an essay entitled "The Types of Worldview (Weltanschauung) and their Development in Metaphysics" that became quite influential. Dilthey characterized worldviews as providing a perspective on life that encompasses the cognitive, evaluative, and volitional aspects of human experience. Although worldviews have always been expressed in literature and religion, philosophers have attempted to give them conceptual definition in their metaphysical systems. On that basis, Dilthey found it possible to distinguish three general recurring types of worldview. The first of these he called naturalism because it gives priority to the perceptual and experimental determination of what is and allows contingency to influence how we evaluate and respond to reality. Naturalism can be found in Democritus, Hobbes, Hume and many other modern philosophers. The second type of worldview is called the idealism of freedom and is represented by Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Bergson among others. It is dualistic and gives primacy to the freedom of the will. The organizational order of our world is structured by our mind and the will to know. The third type is called objective idealism and Dilthey sees it in Heraclitus, Parmenides, Spinoza, Leibniz and Hegel. In objective idealism the ideal does not hover above what is actual but inheres in it. This third type of worldview is ultimately monistic and seeks to discern the inner coherence and harmony among all things. Dilthey thought it impossible to come up with a universally valid metaphysical or systematic formulation of any of these worldviews, but regarded them as useful schema for his own more reflective kind of life philosophy. See
Makkreel and Rodi, Wilhelm Dilthey, Selected Works, volume 6, 2019.
Anthropologically, worldviews can be expressed as the "fundamental cognitive, affective, and evaluative presuppositions a group of people make about the nature of things, and which they use to order their lives."
If it were possible to draw a
map of the
world on the basis of ''Weltanschauung'',
[ Pp]
25
36
29-30
242
248
it would probably be seen to cross political borders—''Weltanschauung'' is the product of
political
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studi ...
borders and common experiences of a people from a
geographical region,
environmental
A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scal ...
-
climatic conditions, the economic resources available, socio-cultural
system
A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and express ...
s, and the
language family.
(The work of the
population geneticist
Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and between populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as adaptation, speciation, and popu ...
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza aims to show the gene-
linguistic co-
evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
of people).
Worldview is used very differently by
linguists and
sociologists
This is a list of sociologists. It is intended to cover those who have made substantive contributions to social theory and research, including any sociological subfield. Scientists in other fields and philosophers are not included, unless at lea ...
. It is for this reason that James W. Underhill suggests five subcategories: world-perceiving, world-conceiving, cultural mindset, personal world, and perspective.
Comparison of Worldviews
One can think of a worldview as comprising a number of
basic beliefs which are philosophically equivalent to the axioms of the worldview considered as a logical or consistent theory. These basic beliefs cannot, by definition, be proven (in the logical sense) within the worldview – precisely because they are
axioms, and are typically argued ''from'' rather than argued ''for''. However their coherence can be explored philosophically and logically.
If two different worldviews have sufficient common beliefs it may be possible to have a constructive dialogue between them.
On the other hand, if different worldviews are held to be basically incommensurate and irreconcilable, then the situation is one of
cultural relativism and would therefore incur the standard criticisms from
philosophical realists.
Additionally, religious believers might not wish to see their beliefs relativized into something that is only "true for them".
Subjective logic is a belief-reasoning formalism where beliefs explicitly are subjectively held by individuals but where a consensus between different worldviews can be achieved.
A third alternative sees the worldview approach as only a methodological relativism, as a suspension of judgment about the truth of various belief systems but not a declaration that there is no global truth. For instance, the religious philosopher
Ninian Smart begins his ''Worldviews: Cross-cultural Explorations of Human Beliefs'' with "Exploring Religions and Analysing Worldviews" and argues for "the neutral, dispassionate study of different religious and secular systems—a process I call worldview analysis."
The comparison of religious, philosophical or scientific worldviews is a delicate endeavor, because such worldviews start from different
presuppositions and cognitive values. Clément Vidal has proposed metaphilosophical criteria for the comparison of worldviews, classifying them in three broad categories:
# ''objective'': objective consistency, scientificity, scope
# ''subjective'': subjective consistency, personal utility, emotionality
# ''intersubjective'': intersubjective consistency, collective utility, narrativity
Characteristics
While
Leo Apostel and his followers clearly hold that individuals can construct worldviews, other writers regard worldviews as operating at a
community
A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, t ...
level, or in an
unconscious way. For instance, if one's worldview is fixed by one's language, as according to a strong version of the
Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, one would have to learn or invent a new language in order to construct a new worldview.
According to Apostel, a worldview is an
ontology
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophy, philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, Becoming (philosophy), becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into Category ...
, or a descriptive
model of the world. It should comprise these six elements:
# An
explanation of the world
# A
futurology, answering the question "Where are we heading?"
# Values, answers to
ethical questions: "What should we do?"
# A
praxeology, or
methodology, or theory of
action: "How should we attain our goals?"
# An
epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Epi ...
, or theory of
knowledge
Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distin ...
: "What is
true and false?"
# An
etiology. A constructed world-view should contain an account of its own "building blocks", its origins and construction.
Terror management theory
A worldview, according to
terror management theory (TMT), serves as a buffer against death anxiety.
It is theorized that living up to the ideals of one's worldview provides a sense of self-esteem which provides a sense of transcending the limits of human life (e.g. literally, as in religious belief in immortality; symbolically, as in art works or children to live on after one's death, or in contributions to one's culture).
Evidence in support of terror management theory includes a series of experiments by Jeff Schimel and colleagues in which a group of Canadians found to score highly on a measure of patriotism were asked to read an essay attacking the dominant Canadian worldview.
Using a test of
death-thought accessibility (DTA), involving an ambiguous word completion test (e.g. "COFF__" could either be completed as either "COFFEE" or "COFFIN" or "COFFER"), participants who had read the essay attacking their worldview were found to have a significantly higher level of DTA than the control group, who read a similar essay attacking Australian cultural values. Mood was also measured following the worldview threat, to test whether the increase in death thoughts following worldview threat were due to other causes, for example, anger at the attack on one's cultural worldview.
No significant changes on mood scales were found immediately following the worldview threat.
To test the generalisability of these findings to groups and worldviews other than those of nationalistic Canadians, Schimel ''et al'' conducted a similar experiment on a group of religious individuals whose worldview included that of
creationism.
Participants were asked to read an essay which argued in support of the theory of evolution, following which the same measure of DTA was taken as for the Canadian group.
Religious participants with a creationist worldview were found to have a significantly higher level of death-thought accessibility than those of the control group.
Goldenberg ''et al'' found that highlighting the similarities between humans and other animals increases death-thought accessibility, as does attention to the physical rather than meaningful qualities of sex.
Religion
Nishida Kitaro wrote extensively on "the Religious Worldview" in exploring the philosophical significance of Eastern religions.
According to
Neo-Calvinist
Neo-Calvinism, a form of Dutch Calvinism, is a theological movement initiated by the theologian and former Dutch prime minister Abraham Kuyper. James Bratt has identified a number of different types of Dutch Calvinism: The Seceders, split into ...
David Naugle's ''World view: The History of a Concept'', "Conceiving of Christianity as a worldview has been one of the most significant developments in the recent history of the church."
The Christian thinker
James W. Sire defines a worldview as "a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true, or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic
construction of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being." He suggests that "we should all think in terms of worldviews, that is, with a consciousness not only of our own way of thought but also that of other people, so that we can first understand and then genuinely communicate with others in our pluralistic society."
The commitment mentioned by James W. Sire can be extended further. The worldview increases the commitment to serve the world. With the change of a person's view towards the world, he/she can be motivated to serve the world. This serving attitude has been illustrated by Tareq M Zayed as the 'Emancipatory Worldview' in his writing "History of emancipatory worldview of Muslim learners".
David Bell has also raised questions on religious worldviews for the designers of
superintelligences – machines much smarter than humans.
References
External links
*
Wikibook:The scientific world view
''Wiki Worldview Themes: A Structure for Characterizing and Analyzing Worldviews''includes links to roughly 1000 Wikipedia articles
* – a 2002 essay on research in linguistic relativity (Lera Boroditsky)
*
inTERRAgation.com—A documentary project. Collecting and evaluating answers to "the meaning of life" from around the world.The God Contention—Comparing various worldviews, faiths, and religions through the eyes of their advocates.Cole, Graham A., ''Do Christians have a Worldview?''A paper examining the concept of worldview as it relates to and has been used by Christianity. Contains a helpful annotated bibliography.
Pogorskiy, E. (2015). Using personalisation to improve the effectiveness of global educational projects. E-Learning and Digital Media, 12(1), 57–67.from Project Worldview
from the
American Scientific Affiliation (a Christian perspective)
* Eugene Webb
''Worldview and Mind: Religious Thought and Psychological Development.''Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2009.
* Benjamin Gal-Or, ''Cosmology, Physics and Philosophy'', Springer Verlag, 1981, 1983, 1987, , .
{{DEFAULTSORT:World View
Conceptual modelling
Consensus reality
Psychological concepts
Concepts in epistemology
Epistemology of religion