The Worldview Concept
“If you wish to converse with me, define your terms”, said Voltaire. In this longer background article we will do just that for the term worldview by providing examples, setting up distinctions, looking at current definitions, and finally by presenting a definition of our own. First, though, we should clarify that we do not see worldview as a Christian or religious concept. While religions certainly provide worldviews, we take the term much more broadly. Let’s look at some examples that will pin down what we think of when we talk about worldviews. Many of these examples will be themes and topics of the publication.
Political ideologies are some of the most obvious stand-ins for worldviews. Despite the vagueness of the term ideology, we can distinguish broadly conservatism, progressivism, ecologism, socialism, (neo)liberalism, libertarianism, fascism, and communism. There are associated -isms that don’t quite reach the status of political ideology (in that they don’t have political parties dedicated to them) but that do signify a particular view of the world: cosmopolitanism, nativism, anarchism, authoritarianism, communitarianism, populism, humanism, capitalism, corporatism and (neo-)Marxism. The latter example is peculiar, though. Today it is mostly viewed as a political agenda whereas its original formulation included various metaphysical and historical claims about progress and social organisation.
Indeed, worldviews do go wider than just politics, and metaphysics is about as wide as one can go. Metaphysics is the philosophical study of reality as such, and examples of metaphysical positions are reductionism, holism, physicalism, materialism, determinism, naturalism, empiricism, rationalism, idealism, realism, substantialism, processism, relationism, monism, dualism, panpsychism, pantheism, deism, theism, and mysticism.
As mentioned, religions also provide worldviews, and they are extremely successful at it. They combine both a metaphysics with an ethics and back it up with social and political organisation. The most well-known religions are Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Taoism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Zoroastrianism. Perhaps not quite religions, but definitely belief systems that are worldviews: Buddhism, Confucianism, Rastafarianism, Paganism, animism, polytheism, Shamanism, New Ageism. And the negation of religion is, of course, also a worldview: agnosticism and atheism.
A worldview may also inculcate a particular attitude in those who hold it. We take such attitudes to be derivative of an underlying, not always conscious, worldview. Examples are individualism, collectivism, scientism, nihilism, environmentalism, and hedonism.
The various philosophical systems and traditions, both alive and long passed away, can be termed worldviews. We can distinguish stoicism, skepticism, existentialism, postmodernism, (post-)structuralism, pragmatism, objectivism, rationalism, empiricism, and positivism. Related are different kinds of social theories. Transhumanism, (effective) altruism, feminism, techno-optimism, utilitarianism and the different kinds of anarchism: anarcho-primitivism, anarcho-capitalism, and anarcho-syndicalism. Finally, also scientific theories sometimes transcend their disciplinary boundaries to become (part of) a worldview. There are sociobiology, evolutionism, information theory, chaos theory, and systems theory.
It will be clear by now that most, if not all, -isms are worldviews. However, this does still not exhaust all worldviews. Later, we will distinguish between collective worldviews—we can recognise these as the -ism words—and individual worldviews. The worldview of an individual is almost always unique to that person and therefore cannot be captured by an -ism. They are usually a combination of the above examples, put together in an idiosyncratic way. Some noteworthy examples, possibly subject of future publications, are Yuval Noah Harari’s views on history and the future, Douglas Hofstadter’s views on the mind, Steven Pinker’s views on progress, Noam Chomsky’s views on language and politics, and so on.
Why Weltanschauung
These are a great many disparate examples. But why would they be best captured by the term worldview? There are plenty of related words that can be used, like ideology, philosophy, paradigm, or perhaps even myth or theory of everything. However, there is a singular meaning of the term worldview that is not captured by these near-synonyms and which makes this term ideal for the project of this publication.
‘Worldview’ is a calque from German, which coined Weltanschauung in the 18th century. ‘Worldview’ is a good translation, as Welt is literally world and anschauung is something like perception, observation, or view. ‘World’ implies comprehensiveness and generalisation. ‘View’ can stand both for the act of observation, to view is to perceive or observe, and for a particular view of something, to have a view is to have an opinion or belief. Both meanings are implied in worldview. More importantly, ‘view’ also implies a point of view, and ‘worldview’ implies a place from which the world is observed and a generalisation is made. This is what distinguishes the term most from ideology, philosophy and other terms. A worldview is a view from somewhere. The word implies a reflexive stance, thereby including the viewer and the viewer’s context into the evaluation of the worldview. It acknowledges that here is no Archimedean point, no view from nowhere. As such we are directed not solely to evaluate whether the worldview fits the facts, but also to where the worldview originates and what impact it has on our world, regardless of its correctness or reasonableness.
It is here also that the personal aspect enters. All worldviews start from a philosophical core of assumptions and questions, explicit or implicit, afforded by one’s lived experience. This experience with the world pre-configures your perspective on reality by deciding the questions that you ask and by shaping the premises from which you start. This may explain why you pay more attention to some features of the world than others. Someone with a feminist worldview focuses on the position of women in society, and not necessarily the metaphysical nature of reality, because their life experience has made this feature of the world more salient.
Some useful distinctions
There is a problem, though. Very few of the given examples provide a truly comprehensive view of the world. It is therefore better to term them worldview fragments, which can be part of a total worldview when combined with other fragments.1 Many fragments share a likeness, like libertarianism, individualism, and (anarcho-)capitalism do. They can be combined into a more total worldview, such as Ayn Rand’s objectivism in this case. The original Marxism combines socialism, collectivism, communism, and atheism, with other specific ideas such as dialectical materialism. The early modern system philosophers, like Spinoza, were especially adept at constructing total worldviews, synthesising a multiplicity of views we can identify as worldview fragments. Spinoza combined pantheism and panpsychism (or dual-aspect monism) with determinism, humanism, individualism, stoic ethics, holism, and rationalism. When examining total worldviews it will be helpful to identify these component fragments and to examine whether they are coherent with one another.
Another useful distinction is between lived and discursive worldviews. Discursive worldviews are conceptually highly articulated and establish a theory that is subject to criticism and improvement. However, an individual or group may hold a certain discursive worldview but may not act on it. The effective worldview is the lived worldview, the one that informs daily life without requiring much reflection. A religious person living a secular life may be an example of the possible disconnect between a discursive and a lived worldview. Whether or not the discursive worldview translates into a lived worldview may give some indication of it as a force in the world. Religions are powerful in this sense whereas philosophical systems are much less so. Not even a radical philosophical skeptic wonders about whether the sun will rise for another day.
A third distinction is whether a worldview is held by an individual or by a collective. All the -isms above are, by definition, WVs held by many people, past or present. Individuals develop a lived worldview by absorbing beliefs about the natural and social world from the group culture in which they grow up and by settling into attitudes informed by their direct life experiences. Culture in the broad sense can be construed as the total worldview of that group, which is passed on to a greater or lesser degree to the individuals constituting the group. Both an individual and a group may also construct a discursive worldview that builds on this lived view, while taking in additional theoretical and conceptual elements that intellectually justify or adapt the lived worldview.
A final distinction, closely connected to the previous one, can be made between constructed and adopted worldviews. Human beings are predisposed to adopt the attitudes and beliefs of their social surroundings, which is inescapable and innocent to a large extent. This is especially so for something as basic and far-reaching as one’s worldview. Nevertheless, there is room for both individuals and groups to construct particular views, independent from or in opposition to the dominant view. Various philosophical schools are examples of such oppositional construction of views, sometimes even visible in the very name of the doctrine, as is the case for postmodernism.
Purpose and function of worldview
A worldview’s primary purpose is to provide an explanation of the world in terms of a description of the perceived facts and by identifying causes and reasons for why the world is the way it is. Such an explanation often sees itself as the True and only explanation, even though it is necessarily a simplification. This often happens by elevating some principle found in a realm of ideas from its specific application, applying it much more broadly. For example, an information theorist may be inspired by the computing revolution and recognise that aspects of the universe behave as a Turing machine, concluding that information is the essence of the world. Or consider the anarchist who sees oppression in centralised government, and who may consequently view the whole of the social world as best organised in a decentralised way.
A worldview also fulfils various social and psychological functions. It can provide meaning to human existence by placing us in a larger narrative, perhaps by giving us a moral task to perform and by promising us a reward upon completion, as many religions claim. It also orders the chaos of this world so that when disaster strikes, we may accept it and move on without lasting damage. As such, a worldview is existentially relevant to the highest degree. It determines, for example, whether you live in a sacred world created by a transcendent God or a universe devoid of any and all absolute value, composed only of atoms and the void. Furthermore, a shared worldview also functions as a glue that holds a community together. It imprints individuals with a more or less stable and uniform set of values and ways of living and acting so that the group may live without strife. Political organisation thus becomes possible. When examining worldviews it is important to keep in mind the goal(s) it has and the functions it serves in a community and for an individual (though without reducing it to merely that).
Defining worldview
Several authors have offered definitions of what a worldview is and what criteria can be used to identify and evaluate worldviews. We will examine two such definitions and then attempt one of our own.
The Center Leo Apostel (CLEA) is a transdisciplinary research centre at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) whose primary goal is the integration of existing worldviews and the formulation of new ones.2 They are thinking from a rational, philosophical, and scientific attitude, looking to construct worldviews grounded in empirical fact, being highly discursive and individual, and aiming for totality. In Worldviews: From fragmentation to integration, following definition can be found3:
A world view is a coherent collection of concepts and theorems that must allow us to construct a global image of the world, and in this way to understand as many elements of our experience as possible.
… a world view is a system of coordinates or a frame of reference in which everything presented to us by our diverse experiences can be placed. It is a symbolic system of representation that allows us to integrate everything we know about the world and ourselves into a global picture, one that illuminates reality as it is presented to us within a certain culture.
This definition emphasises the need for comprehensiveness and totality, while also accepting that worldviews are perspectives—a system of coordinates always has an origin. The definition is normative rather descriptive, and, arguably, no single worldview today meets the criteria of comprehensiveness and totality that are emphasised.
In addition to this definition, the CLEA group also formulated a set of very useful questions to guide worldview construction4:
What is? This question leads to an ontology or a model of reality. A worldview should give some insight into how the world is structured and what entities are present in it.
Where does it all come from? A worldview should put forward some explanatory principles and should present a model of the past.
Where are we going? A worldview should make some predictions and present a model of the future.
What is good and what is bad? This question relates to values. A worldview should provide an axiology or a theory of values that deals with morality, ethics, and aesthetics.
What must we do? Given a set of values, how should we go about realising our goals? Worldviews should answer these questions by affording principles that guide our actions, thereby giving us a praxeology or theory of actions.
What is true and what is false? This question is about epistemology or theory of knowledge, which determines how and even if we can attain the knowledge sought after in questions one to three.
Besides offering a guide to worldview construction, these questions can also serve as different axes along which one can analyse an existing worldview (fragment). Worldviews that offer cogent answers to all questions can be said to meet the criteria of totality. We will take up these questions in our definition, but include one more, namely, the question of what makes life meaningful. A worldview should meet the human need for meaning from a personal, social, and cosmic point of view, providing direction and consolation in times of hardship. This is to some extent taken up under question four—and other questions are certainly relevant to it—but it deserves more emphasis.
A second definition comes from David K. Naugle, who is the author of Worldview: The History of a Concept. Naugle discusses mostly collective worldviews that are lived and total. One definition he offers is the following5:
A [worldview is a] vision of God, the universe, our world, and ourselves rooted and grounded in the embodied human heart as the seat and source of our worship and spirituality, ideas and beliefs, loves and affections, and decisions and actions.
As may be clear, he mostly has religious worldviews in mind. It is less rationalistic than the previous definition and more emotional and faith-based. The emphasis is less on scientific/philosophical worldview construction and more on the wisdom of received tradition.
Naugle further identifies seven features that are common to most worldviews.6 Firstly, a worldview contains an irreducible narrative component—it’s a story in which we play the main part. Secondly, that story touches on the big questions of life, providing (partial) answers to philosophical, theological, spiritual, social, and cultural issues that figure in the experience of a people. Third, the worldview is expressed by the use of symbols, being events, rites, people, places, or things. It is thereby made concrete in the art and architecture of a culture. A fourth feature is memory: the worldview story is the living memory of a community, though continually reinterpreted and adapted to a changing context. Closely related to this is the ethos of a group, which is the “animating spirit” of a culture and which is derived from the overall worldview. Sixth, a worldview offers vision, in both a descriptive and a prescriptive sense—it offers a “view of” the world and a “view for” the world. Finally, there is a practical component: there is a way of life, a praxis, associated with a worldview.
As the first feature says, Naugle sees worldviews primarily as stories, narratives. However, many of the examples enumerated in the first paragraph fail to reach the status of a narrative. Individualism is not so much a narrative as it is an attitude. Perhaps it is the outcome of a larger story that mostly Western cultures have been telling themselves, be it liberalism or free-market capitalism. Still, it should qualify as a worldview fragment, even if it lacks the structure of a story. Naugle seems to reserve the term worldview for total worldviews, thereby emphasising the holistic aspect of worldview. This publication, on the other hand, does include worldview fragments.
Our definition attempt
The above definitions are somewhat opposite one another. The CLEA group takes a rational-scientific approach to worldviews, implying that worldviews should be actively constructed and made to fit the empirical data, while acknowledging the various philosophical assumptions that such an endeavour requires and the various social and psychological functions it should fulfil. Here, the individual is tasked with constructing a discursive total worldview.
Naugle takes the religious worldview as a paradigm, where importance of community and living with tradition are emphasised, as well as the human need to narrativise their world and life. Worldviews are inherited more than that they are constructed. The collective lives by a total worldview—which need not be discursive—that acts as the soil on which other cultural expressions may grow.
We want to take a middle ground between the two. We want to discuss both broadly held, collective worldviews and interview individuals with unique self-constructed views of the world. We will not restrict ourselves to total worldviews, but will include worldview fragments, which are more often widely prevalent in society and often part of multiple total views. For obvious reasons, discursive worldviews, or discursive versions of worldviews, will be the subject of discussion. Most lived worldviews have been made discursive to an extent, anyway.
There is one element we would like to emphasise in addition, namely the inescapability of presuppositions. All thinking requires a set of assumptions that are more or less basic and that set up a framework through which experience is interpreted. These basic beliefs have no justification other than direct experience, both with the physical world and the world of social relations and culture. Part of worldview analysis is finding those assumptions, often tacit and lived or non-discursive, and examining their validity.
The following, then, is a working definition that may approximate what is meant with the word ‘Worldview’ in the context of this publication:
A worldview is a set of assumptions, tacit and/or explicit, and their derived beliefs and attitudes that sets up a frame of reference or conceptual framework for interpretation and action. This framework is pre-configured by experience—personal and cultural—to select certain features of the world as being explanatory, others as being in need of explanation, and still others as being in need of correction. It makes claims about how the world is and how it functions, thereby performing social, psychological, and existential or spiritual functions essential to individual and collective life. The framework aims to be comprehensive or total, while being composed of worldview fragments that are applicable only to some aspect(s) of the world; it can be constructed or adopted, lived (put in practice) or merely discursive, and individual or collective.
We can further clothe this definition by putting together the questions from the CLEA group and the features of Naugle. A worldview (fragment) explains, predicts, and describes the world, answering the big questions of existence, and is often captured in a narrative format and conveyed through symbolism. The worldview says what is valuable by providing an axiology, prescribing both an ethos and a vision, and how one should act by providing a praxeology or way of life. It often also determines how we know things (epistemology) and as an additional seventh criterion, it provides an existential meaning to life, both cosmically and socially.
Further reading
A history of the Western worldview(s)
“The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View” by Richard Tarnas
A philosophical-scientific research programme on worldviews
“World Views: from fragmentation to integration” by the CLEA research group (pdf)
About scientific and spiritual worldviews
“War of the Worldviews: The Struggle Between Science and Spirituality” by Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow
Books from a religious perspective, with a mostly Christian bias
“Worldview: The History of a Concept” by David K. Naugle
“Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept” and “The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog” by James W. Sire
“What's Your Worldview?: An Interactive Approach to Life's Big Questions” by James N. Anderson
“Understanding the Times: A Survey of Competing Worldviews” by Jeff Myers, David A. Noebel
“Why You Think the Way You Do: The Story of Western Worldviews from Rome to Home” by Glenn S. Sunshine
The first three distinctions are taken from Staf Hellemans, The many faces of the world World views in agrarian civilisations and in modern societies, in https://www.vub.be/CLEA/dissemination/groups-archive/vzw_worldviews/publications/worldviews2part1.pdf
page 8 in Aerts, D., Apostel, L., De Moor, B., Hellemans, S., Maex, E., Van Belle, H., & Van der Veken, J. (2002). Worldviews: From fragmentation to integration. VUB Press. http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CLEA/Reports/WorldviewsBook.html
As found in Vidal, C. (2008) Wat is een wereldbeeld? (What is a worldview?), in Van Belle, H. & Van der Veken, J., Editors, Nieuwheid denken. De wetenschappen en het creatieve aspect van de werkelijkheid, in press. Acco, Leuven.
Ibid