A Worldview is a set of beliefs about fundamental aspects of reality that necessarily constructs and influences all the perceiving, thinking, knowing, and doing of a person. A person's worldview is also referred to as that person's philosophy (of life), mindset, or outlook on life, or the formula for life, ideology, faith, or even religion.

In other words, worldview refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual, group or culture views and interprets the world and interacts with it.

To be precise, Worldview is a person's conception, philosophy or view of the world.

Theoretically speaking, worldview is an intellectual perspective on the world or on the universe. It is also described as a contemplation of the world, or as a view of life, or as the perception about the world. Worldview is also referred to as a particular philosophy of life, or as a concept about life and the world perceived by an individual or a group.

Worldview essentially refers to the fundamental cognitive orientation of an entity (e.g. an individual, a group, or a society) encompassing the whole of the entity's knowledge and point of view.

The term worldview is a calque of the German word 'Weltanschauung' meaning [a person or group's] worldview. The term weltanschauung is a composition of 'Welt' ('world') and 'Anschauung' ('perception' or 'show'). Weltanschauung is a fundamental concept of German philosophy, especially epistemology, and refers to a 'wide world perception'.

Predominantly, a worldview often includes the following areas of understanding:

• natural philosophy
• fundamental, existential, and normative postulates
• themes
• values
• emotions, and
• ethics

Demystifying Weltanschauung

In 'Types and Problems of Philosophy', Hunter Mead defined 'Weltanschauung' as 'an all-inclusive world-view or outlook. A somewhat poetic term to indicate either an articulated system of philosophy or a more or less unconscious attitude toward life and the world'.

In 'The Question of a Weltanschauung' from his 'New Introductory Lectures in Psycho-Analysis', Sigmund Freud described Weltanschauung as '... an intellectual construction which solves all the problems of our existence uniformly on the basis of one overriding hypothesis, which, accordingly, leaves no question unanswered and in which everything that interests us finds its fixed place'.

In 'Discipleship of the Mind', James W. Sire described world view as '... a set of presuppositions ... which we hold ... about the makeup of our world'.

In his article on the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey in 'The Encyclopedia of Philosophy', Hans Peter Rickman wrote that 'there is in mankind a persistent tendency to achieve a comprehensive interpretation, a Weltanschauung, or philosophy, in which a picture of reality is combined with a sense of its meaning and value and with principles of action'.

Elements of Worldview

The elements of a person's worldview is the set of beliefs about certain aspects of reality; these aspects are one's:

• epistemology: the beliefs about the nature and sources of someone's knowledge
• metaphysics: the beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality
• cosmology: the beliefs about the origin and nature of the universe, life, and especially humankind
• teleology: the beliefs about the meaning and purpose of the universe, its inanimate elements, and the inhabitants in it
• theology: the beliefs about the existence and nature of God (often related to, or discussed around religion and/or religious beliefs)
• anthropology: the beliefs about the nature and purpose of humans in general, and oneself in particular
• axiology: the beliefs about the nature of value, understanding of what is good and bad, and what is right and wrong

Types of Worldview

Clément Vidal proposed the following metaphilosophical criteria of worldview to present them in 3 broad categories:

1. Objective Worldview: deals with objective consistency, scientificity, scope
2. Subjective Worldview: deals with subjective consistency, personal utility, emotionality
3. Intersubjective Worldview: deals with intersubjective consistency, collective utility, narrativity

Characteristics of Worldview

According to Leo Apostel, a worldview is an ontology, or a descriptive model of the world, and it essentially comprises of 6 elements:

1. An explanation of the world
2. A futurology, answering the question 'Where are we heading?'
3. Values, answers to ethical questions: 'What should we do?'
4. A praxeology, or methodology, or theory of action: 'How should we attain our goals?'
5. An epistemology, or theory of knowledge: 'What is true and false?'
6. An etiology, a constructed worldview should contain an account of its own 'building blocks', its origins and construction

A group of philosophers believe that individuals can construct worldviews, while others argue that worldviews operate at a community level, or in an unconscious way.

Common spelling variations of the term worldview are: worldview, world-view, and world view.
 

Useful Readings

Aerts, Diederik; Apostel, Leo; de Moor, Bart; Hellemans, Staf; Maex, Edel; van Belle, Hubert & van der Veken, Jan (1994). "World views. From Fragmentation to Integration". VUB Press. Translation of Apostel and Van der Veken (1991) with some additions. The Center Leo Apostel.
Bell, David (2016). Superintelligence and World-views: Putting the Spotlight on Some Important Issues. Guildford, Surrey, UK: Grosvenor House Publishing Limited. ISBN 9781786237668.
Edwards, Paul  (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: Macmillan (1967).
Freud, Sigmund (1990). New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. W. W. Norton & Company; The Standard Edition. ISBN-10: 9780393007435, ISBN-13: 978-0393007435.
Gal-Or, Benjamin (1987). Cosmology, Physics and Philosophy. Springer Verlag. ISBN 0-387-96526-2.
Honderich, Ted (1995). The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-866132-0.
Mead, Hunter (1957). Types and Problems of Philosophy: An Introduction. Henry Holt and Company; Revised Edition.
Palmer, Gary B. (1996). Toward A Theory of Cultural Linguistics. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-76569-6.
Sherif, M. (1936). The Psychology of Social Norms. New York: Harper.
Sire, James W. (1990). Discipleship of the Mind. IVP Books. 1st ed. ISBN-10: 0877849854, ISBN-13: 978-0877849858.
Sire, James W. (2015). Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept. IVP Academic. 2nd ed. ISBN-10: 0830840737, ISBN-13: 978-0830840731.
Webb, Eugene (2009). Worldview and Mind: Religious Thought and Psychological Development. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.