Project Worldview -- About Us

Who We Are / How We Came to Be
The origins of project Worldview can be traced to a late 1980s collaboration between Stephen P. Cook and Donella H. Meadows (co-author of The Limits to Growth) that resulted in the 400 page book Coming of Age in the Global Village (Parthenon Books). Written before the internet existed in modern form, it almost anticipated surfing the web, with its accounts of "shopping in the Reality Marketplace" for a worldview. This 1990 book contained the version 1.0 structure for characterizing worldviews, employing twenty-six worldview themes. After using it at Arkansas Tech University and the Arkansas School for Mathematics and Science where he taught, Cook decided to expand and refine it and project Worldview was born.

With the 2006 website launch it became possible to click on Take me to The Reality Marketplace, and have an internet adventure in fully exploring an updated version of worldview themes.   The version 2.0 structure implemented in 2006 uses eighty worldview themes on fifty-two individual cards or frames. Using the website in conjunction with an educational CD known as The Worldview Kit provides an enhanced, even fun, learning experience.

By mid 2009, Cook completed a 202 page companion to the website: The Worldview Literacy Book . This is marketed bundled with both The Worldview Kit and the Coming of Age book (with new epilogue written in 2007 added). By January 2010 he started a blog called Worldview Watch featuring commentary and analysis of news from a worldview perspective.  Twenty one issues of it appeared over the next two years.

2012 brought three new additions to the project Worldview web site:
1) The Quick Worldview Analysis program--version 1.00, a tool to check your worldview's compatibility with someone else's or with that of a typical USA adult.
2) Lengthy excerpts from The Worldview Literacy Book were added to web pages of all worldview themes
3) The beginnings of the version 3.0 structure, with the 80 worldview themes broken into 320 sub-themes, each linked to Wikipedia articles, click here to see how the beta version is evolving...

2013 brought an expanded worldview theme descriptions and one additional worldview theme (80==>81), a page for Home Schoolers, a simpler way to Characterize Worldviews, and a redesigned home page...

Mission Statement
As a non-profit, non-sectarian, educational organization devoted to "Helping You Find Your Own Answers to Life's Big Questions," providing "Education for the Global Village," and helping people make sense out of "the confusion of existence," our mission is

1) to promote the idea that individuals should consciously be aware of their deeply held beliefs, values and associated long-term behavior patterns, that is, they should actively and analytically be concerned with both the contents and the development of their worldviews.

2) to aid an individual's worldview development by providing a free inquiry based systematic approach loosely guided by worldview development questions.

3) to humbly express the hope that all people come to have a healthy worldview, one that brings happiness and promotes planetary well-being. We shall do this while abiding by a "Neutrality Pledge" and not pushing our beliefs on visitors to our website, books, or software.

4) to develop and steadily refine a framework and methodology that serves as a tool for understanding, analyzing, checking for consistency, and comparing / contrasting individual worldviews, despite the complexity of the task. We hope that this tool is useful in understanding conflicts in terms of the underlying conflicting worldviews, and aiding the search for common ground and satisfactory conflict resolution. We anticipate working with researchers and other interested people in refining our creations--perhaps even using them in predictive analysis settings someday.

We also strive to periodically critically evaluate our efforts using feedback we get from others. This continually refined critique is called Pioneers in Worldview Analysis or Something Less Flattering?

Dedication
To honor both her important early contribution to project Worldview and her life work promoting global citizenship, systems thinking and building the sustainability movement...
This website is dedicated to the memory of Donella Meadows. Unfortunately by the time project Worldview was formally launched at the end of 2006, this pioneering environmental scientist, longtime Dartmouth College professor, and 1994 MacArthur Prize winner, was no longer around, having suddenly died in 2001. Click above or here to read more about her...

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