project WORLDVIEW copyright 2008 Home
Worldviews--An Introduction
2) Worldviews: Literacy, Behavior, Values and Conflict
3) Using Worldview Themes to Assess Worldviews; Examining Beliefs
4) Examples of Worldview Characterizations of Actual People
5) More To Explore: Many Links Related to Worldviews--An Introduction
6) Thoughts To Take With You: Quotes Related to Worldviews--An Introduction
1.Worldview Development
As a child, as you grow and experience the world, you see relationships,
categorize, discriminate and generalize about what your senses reveal. You
replace the sensory experiences and memories with abstract generalized ideas and
understanding in forming concepts. You fit many concepts together into schemes,
and structure your conceptual schemes into a framework. Though the rate of
acquiring new concepts generally slows as you age, your conceptual framework can
change as new experiences provide new insights. In this way, your comprehensive
conception of the world as a whole, that is, your worldview, develops.
Your worldview includes everything and all events in the world as you relate
to them, and encompasses past, present, and future. Besides incorporating a
purpose or “raison d’etre,” it also provides an outlook or expectation for
the world as it exists or is perceived to exist. It is something
that continually evolves--indeed, you spend the rest of your life testing and
refining it, based on feedback you get. In
short, a worldview is a
conceptual framework and a set of beliefs used to make sense out of a complex, seemingly
chaotic reality. Increasingly it becomes the source of your goals
and desires, and as such it shapes your behavior and values.
Related Words, Beliefs, Background --20 entries
2.Worldviews: Literacy, Behavior, Values and Conflict
Worldviews
develop as your language acquisition and literacy grows. Increasing
technological literacy is typically linked to acquiring new skills and
capabilities. Behavior can change accordingly. Ideally your behavior will be both driven by
and consistent with your beliefs and values. Such coherence in your worldview
can be an important source of strength--one that leads to increased self
esteem, greater effectiveness in interacting with others, and to your becoming a
healthy, self actualized person. If you understand your worldview, you can better
understand your own behavior and values--but you live in a world that also
includes other people. Encounters with those whose
behavior / lifestyle is quite different from your own are important in both
understanding yourself and the society you are part of. You may find that
making sense of their behavior requires understanding their worldview--something that may present challenges to your own beliefs and values. Likewise, if others understand your worldview, they can better
understand your behavior and values. When one makes a value judgment, one makes
a statement about the way the world "ought to" be--and of course
people do this differently depending on their worldviews.
So as you'd expect, differences in the underlying worldviews are typically of critical
importance in disputes which arise over conflicting values, ethical concerns, societal stresses,
technology assessment, environmental or quality of life issues, etc.
Related Words, Beliefs, Background--19 entries
3.Using Worldview Themes to Assess Worldviews; Examining Beliefs
In a
philosophy class, one might consider worldviews in terms of
epistemological, metaphysical, cosmological, teleological, theological,
anthropological, and axiological beliefs. A more accessible approach is to
undertake this assessment in terms of worldview themes. A worldview theme
typically links beliefs with behaviors, orientations, and values. Your worldview
fundamentally affects what you perceive, think, feel, and do. Certain beliefs,
thoughts, feelings and behaviors often come together in a way that is
articulated in similar fashion repeatedly by multitudes of people. Given a name
and formal description, this is called a worldview
theme. Many such themes can
be used to characterize an individual’s worldview.
This project Worldview website provides
eighty worldview themes, presented on fifty-two cards or frames, for doing just that.
It will help you both fully explore each theme and--using brief questionnaires--assess how compatible your own worldview is with it.
The Project
Worldview's website's Top Cards and Discards Program
can provide a quick characterization of your worldview, while its Worldview
Kit offering will give a more detailed and complete assessment. Analyzing your own worldview in
terms of its component parts is a big step forward in the ongoing process of
discovering who you are, relating to other people and understanding how you fit
into the world. Likewise the process of examining your beliefs,
values, and long-term behavior with respect to their consistency, coherence and
the extent to which they promote both your own well being and the health of
society in general is one that should be encouraged!
Related
Words, Beliefs, Background
--17 entries
4. Examples of Worldview Characterizations
of Actual People
Project
Worldview's tools can also be used to understand and
analyze the worldviews of other people. For example, click
here to read "Worldviews and The Game of Life--Examples"
click here to
see a characterization of the worldview of Albert Einstein
click here to
see a characterization of the worldview of Abraham Lincoln
| Worldview (from online encyclopedia) |
| "What is a Worldview?", by F. Heylighen (from Principia Cybernetica Web) |
| Concept (from online encyclopedia) |
| Belief (from online encyclopedia) |
| Value Theory (from online encyclopedia) |
| Worldviews: from fragmentation to integration (classic 1994 paper by Leo Apostel, etal) |
| Worldviews and their Components -- A Theoretical Framework (from book Viewing the World Ecologically) |
| A Worldview Bibliography, by David Naugle (Naugle is professor of philosophy at Dallas Baptist University) |
| On Worldviews, by James Olthuis (1983 paper offers academic, faith-based, perspective) |
| "What is a Worldview?" by Ken Funk (Funk is an Oregon State University engineering professor) |
| The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog , by James Sire (excerpts from 2nd edition of book) |
| Worldviews, by Tracy F. Munsil (Christian perspective, on Focus on the Family website) |
| The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently--And Why, by Richard Nisbett |
| "You Are What You Speak" (New Scientist 2002 article about how language shapes one's worldview) |
| "Cultural and Worldview Frames", by Michelle LeBaron (connects conflicts and underlying worldviews) |
| World Values Survey (international social scientists' ongoing study) |
| Center Leo Apostel (Belgium research group promoting development of world views that integrate the results of different disciplines) |
| Worldview, by Scott Bristol (the values heavy theory behind Bristol's "Life Journey's Maps") |
| Criteria for Evaluating Worldviews, by J. Kineman (from his 1997 book Theory of Autevolution) |
| U Turn: What If You Woke Up One Morning and Realized You Were Living the Wrong Life, by Bruce Grierson (2007 book) |
| Humor, Sublimity, and Incongruity, by John Marmysz (the origin of laughter and worldview development) |
| Consilience--The Unity of Knowledge, by Edward O. Wilson (book review of this important 1998 book) |
| Worldview Diversity (from teaching about religion website) |
| Worldview Tests, by Kenneth Richard Samples (nine methods for testing worldviews; fundamentalist perspective) |
| The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph Kett, and James Trefil |
| Character Education Partnership (goal: developing "people of good character for a just and compassionate society") |
| Religious Literacy, by Stephen Prothero (review of 2007 book by chair of Boston University Religion Dept.) |
| Even Secular Parents Are Religious Educators, by Roberta Nelson (excerpt from Parenting Beyond Belief) |
| Bible Literacy Project ("An Educated Person is Familiar With the Bible") |
| Belief-O-Matic (a personality quiz about your religious and spiritual beliefs from Beliefnet. com) |
| The Worldview Quiz (from Reason for the Common Good website) |
|
"The project of world-view construction consists...[of]...elucidating...the whole of reality starting from certain parts." |
Leo Apostel, etal. in "Worldviews: from fragmentation to integration". |
| "[T]here 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 meaning and value and with principles of action..." | Wilhelm Dilthy, from The Encyclopedia of Philosophy |
| "If we make fundamentally different meaning of the world, then all our attempts to improve communication...will fail because we may not be addressing our deeper differences that continue to fuel conflicts" | Michelle LeBaron, from "Cultural and Worldview Frames" |
| "If you consider a worldview a private matter and take steps to prevent the open discussion of worldviews, you are in fact imposing your worldview on others; by doing so you...effectively restrict public discourse to trivialities and ungrounded assertions." | Ken Funk, Oregon State University |
| [A worldview consists of]"...beliefs and assumptions by which an individual makes sense of experiences that are hidden deep within the language and traditions of the surrounding society" | Mary Clark, from In Search of Human Nature |
| "An acceptable worldview will avoid 'self-stultification', but will have component parts that hang together as a coherent whole" | Kenneth Richard Samples, from "Worldview Tests" |
| "A worldview supplies a particular community with...basic assumptions about what is real and what is unreal, and criteria for distinguishing what is true from what is false" | Center for Sacred Sciences |
| "Our children long for realistic maps of a future they can be proud of. Where are the cartographers of human purpose?" | World Future Society |
Caution: "As you shop in 'The Reality Marketplace' avoid spending your 'reality cash' too early, before you have seen everything!” from Coming of Age in the Global Village, by Stephen P. Cook, with Donella H. Meadows.
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