Anatomy of a Worldview: Concept Diagrams

Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, 2017

Worldview is the outlook one has about life. It is a paradigm by which the individual or the group interprets reality and acts upon life. It is how we normally view and conceptualize the world. Worldview can be a personal-subjective endeavor or a communal-collective enterprise, depending on the social context and particular subculture – whether it is predominantly individualistic or collectivistic. Worldviews represent our pragmatic framework on existence and shapes our beliefs, attitudes, actions, and philosophies. Basically, the term worldview is used in a broad sense to entail a collection of impressions, perceptions, and phenomena and has roots in anthropology, psychology, sociology, morality, spirituality, mortality, and cosmology. The scope and nature of worldviews can be general or specific, reflecting a global perspective or local heritage. A worldview can be informed by religious thoughts, teachings, and practices, or by art-music, creativity, and humanities, or by statistical findings and empirical persuasions. In addition, the orientation can be Eastern or Western, heterogeneous or homogeneous, simple or complex, naturalistic-atheistic or theological-theistic, etc... At times, worldviews clash significantly and create further tensions and divisions... To some extent, the worldview of individuals, groups, and societies can be revised, redefined, and reconstructed over time. Some people enlarge or modify their perceptions and cultural mappings to include new paradigms and schemas different than their own. Others strict their repertoires, act with cautious aloofness, and employ narrow views and rigid measures to protect themselves and their heritage. Developing a balanced and healthy worldview is actually a challenge but a necessary skill and virtue.

Humaniora Vol 29, No 3, 2017

Worldviews are an important part of human life because they illustrate the ways people think and act. This article aims to review studies conducted by scholars, definitions of the term "worldview", and scientists' explorations of worldviews, and to examine how such categories may be applied to capture reality. This study concludes that worldviews have been the focus of intensive studies since the 1980s. Many scientists have defined the concept of "worldview" and attempted to explain its dynamics. Studies of worldviews can be grouped into several paradigms. Because of the extent of the study area, theoretically worldviews can be classified into several categories based on, for example, views of self and others, time, space, relationships, and causation. In reality, the worldview of a society can be seen in how members of the society live in relation to God, nature, people, and the environment. In examining the worldviews held in social reality, the specific categories mapped by scholars must be made congruent with the realities in the field, because sometimes these categories are interrelated and difficult to understand separately.

The first part of this paper proposes a precise definition of what a worldview is, and why there is a necessity to have one. The second part suggests how to construct integrated scientific worldviews. For this attempts, three general scientific approaches are proposed: the general systems theory as the endeavor for a universal language for science, a general problem-solving approach and the idea of evolution, broadly construed. We close with some remarks about the limitations of a purely scientific worldview.

Mascolo, M. F. (2014). Worldviews. In Teo, T. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. www.springerreference.com/docs/html/chapterdbid/307018.html

Driven by our individual need for contextual-meaning and by our societal need for a shared meaning system, every culture has its own worldview. This article presents a succinct introduction to the nature and function of worldviews and the meta-narratives in which they are passed from one generation to another. Recognising that no worldview can legitimately claim to have a monopoly on the truth, and that every worldview is a work-in-process that evolves over time as the society adapts to its changing circumstances, the main body of this article identifies and discusses the seven “core metaphors” that have given shape to our worldviews over the course of human history

Forum Wissenschaft, 2020