"If the human mind is nonetheless to be able even to think the given infinite without contradiction, it must have within itself a power that is supersensible, whose idea of the noumenon cannot be intuited but can yet be regarded as the substrate underlying what is mere appearance, namely, our intuition of the world [worldview]." (Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Judgment", 1790)
"The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world." (Wilhelm von Humboldt, 1820)
"So it happens at times that a person believes that he has a world-view, but that there is yet one particular phenomenon that is of such a nature that it baffles the understanding, and that he explains differently and attempts to ignore in order not to harbor the thought that this phenomenon might overthrow the whole view, or that his reflection does not possess enough courage and resolution to penetrate the phenomenon with his world-view." (Søren Kierkegaard, 1844)
"The last change in our point of view gives the whole world a pictorial air." (Ralph W Emerson, "Miscellanies, Embracing Nature, Addresses, and Lectures", 1866)
"The mutual interdependence of thought and word illuminates clearly the truth that languages are not really means for representing already known truths, but are rather instruments for discovering previously unrecognised ones. The differences between languages are not those of sounds and signs but those of differing worldviews […] objective truth always rises from the entire energy of subjective individuality." (Wilhelm von Humboldt)
"The systematic perversion and reinterpretation of the values themselves is much more effective than the "slandering" of persons or the falsification of the world view could ever be." (Max Schele, "Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen", 1912)
"Resignation as to knowledge of the world is for me not an irretrievable plunge into a scepticism which leaves us to drift about in life like a derelict vessel. I see in it that effort of honesty which we must venture to make in order to arrive at the serviceable world-view which hovers within sight. Every world-view which fails to start from resignation in regard to knowledge is artificial and a mere fabrication, for it rests upon an inadmissible interpretation of the universe. […] World-view is a product of life-view, not vice versa." (Albert Schweitzer, "Kulturphilosophie", 1923)
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." (Howard P Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu", 1926)
"Whereas the particular conception of ideology designates only a part of the opponent's assertions as ideologies - and this only with reference to their content, the total conception calls into question the opponent's total worldview (including his conceptual apparatus), and attempts to understand these concepts as an outgrowth of the collective life of which he partakes." (Karl Mannheim, "Ideology and Utopia", 1929)
"A Weltanschauung [worldview] is 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 [...] the worldview of science already departs noticeably from our definition. It is true that it too assumes the uniformity of the explanation of the universe; but it does so only as a programme, the fulfillment of which is relegated to the future." Sigmund Freud, "New introductory lectures on psycho-analysis", 1932)
"It happens at times that a person believes that he has a world-view, but that there is yet one particular phenomenon that is of such a nature that it baffles the understanding, and that he explains differently and attempts to ignore in order not to harbor the thought that this phenomenon might overthrow the whole view, or that his reflection does not possess enough courage and resolution to penetrate the phenomenon with his world-view." (Søren Kierkegaard, 1938)
"It is natural to give a clear view of the world after accepting the idea that it must be clear." (Albert Camus, "The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays", 1942)
"Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth." (Simone de Beauvoir, "The Second Sex", 1949)
"Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon then from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins the journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of the crowd, and by choosing knowledge over veils of ignorance., (Henri Bergson, "On Intuition vs. Intellect", 1907) "Everyone has some kind of philosophy, some general worldview, which to men of other views will seem mythological." (H. Richard Niebuhr, "Christ and Culture", 1951)
"A theoretical science unaware that those of its constructs considered relevant and momentous are destined eventually to be framed in concepts and words that have a grip on the educated community and become part and parcel of the general world picture - a theoretical science [...]" (Erwin Schrödinger, "Are There Quantum Jumps?", The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Vol. 3, 1952)
"In particular, and most importantly, this is the reason why the scientific worldview contains of itself no ethical values, no esthetical values, not a word about our own ultimate scope or destination, and no God, if you please." (Erwin Schrödinger, "Nature and the Greeks", 1954)
"[…] the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously." (Erwin Schrödinger, "Nature and the Greeks", 1954)
"Once we give serious consideration to the hypothesis of the unconscious, it follows that our view of the world can be but a provisional one; for if we effect so radical an alteration in the subject of perception and cognition as this dual focus implies, the result must be a world view very different from any known before." (Carl G Jung, "The Structure And Dynamics Of The Psyche", 1960)
"For Science in its totality, the ultimate goal is the creation of a monistic system in which - on the symbolic level and in terms of the inferred components of invisibility and intangibly fine structure — the world’s enormous multiplicity is reduced to something like unity, and the endless successions of unique events of a great many different kinds get tidied and simplified into a single rational order. Whether this goal will ever be reached remains to be seen. Meanwhile we have the various sciences, each with its own system coordinating concepts, its own criterion of explanation." (Aldous Huxley, "Literature and Science", 1963)
"The systems approach goes on to discovering that every world-view is terribly restricted." (C. West Churchman, 1970)
"The notion of ‘system’ has gained central importance in contemporary science, society and life. In many fields of endeavor, the necessity of a ‘systems approach’ or ‘systems thinking’ is emphasized, new professions called ‘systems engineering’, ‘systems analysis’ and the like have come into being, and there can be little doubt that this this concept marks a genuine, necessary, and consequential development in science and world-view." (Ervin László, "Introduction to Systems Philosophy: Toward a New Paradigm of Contemporary Thought", 1972)
"[…] science is not sacrosanct. The restrictions it imposes (and there are many such restrictions though it is not easy to spell them out) are not necessary in order to have general coherent and successful views about the world. There are myths, there are the dogmas of theology, there is metaphysics, and there are many other ways of constructing a worldview. It is clear that a fruitful exchange between science and such ‘nonscientific’ world-views will be in even greater need of anarchism than is science itself. Thus, anarchism is not only possible, it is necessary both for the internal progress of science and for the development of our culture as a whole." (Paul Feyerabend, "Against Method", 1975)
"Man's general way of thinking of the totality, i.e. his general world view, is crucial for overall order of the human mind itself. If he thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken and without border (for every border is a division or break) then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole." (David Bohm, "Wholeness and the Implicate Order", 1980)
"People’s views of the world, of themselves, of their own capabilities, and of the tasks that they are asked to perform, or topics they are asked to learn, depend heavily on the conceptualizations that they bring to the task. In interacting with the environment, with others, and with the artifacts of technology, people form internal, mental models of themselves and of the things with which they are interacting. These models provide predictive and explanatory power for understanding the interaction." (Donald A Norman, "Some observations on Mental Models", 1983)
"Each of us carries within us a worldview, a set of assumptions about how the world works - what some call a paradigm - that forms the very questions we allow ourselves to ask, and determines our view of future possibilities." (Frances M Lappé, "Rediscovering America's Values", 1991)
"Worldviews are social constructions, and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully. Fact and theory are intertwined, and all great scientists understand the interaction." (Stephen Jay Gould, "Shields of Expectation - and Actuality", 1993)
"World view, a concept borrowed from cultural anthropology, refers to the culturally dependent, generally subconscious, fundamental organization of the mind. This conceptual organization manifests itself as a set of presuppositions that predispose one to feel, think, and act in predictable patterns." (Kenneth G Tobin, "The practice of constructivism in science education", 1993)
"As a result, surprisingly enough, scientific advance rarely comes solely through the accumulation of new facts. It comes most often through the construction of new theoretical frameworks. [..] To understand scientific development, it is not enough merely to chronicle new discoveries and inventions. We must also trace the succession of worldviews" (Nancy R Pearcey & Charles B Thaxton, "The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy", 1994)
"Clearly, science is not simply a matter of observing facts. Every scientific theory also expresses a worldview. Philosophical preconceptions determine where facts are sought, how experiments are designed, and which conclusions are drawn from them." (Nancy R Pearcey & Charles B. Thaxton, "The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy", 1994)
"A world view is a system of co-ordinates 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. […] 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." (Diederick Aerts et al, "World views: From Fragmentation to Integration", 1994)
"But making science again a part of every intelligent person's educational resource is the minimum requirement - not because science is more important than other field, but because it is an integral part of a sound contemporary worldview." (Gerald Holton, "Einstein, History, and Other Passions: The Rebellion Against Science at, the End of the Twentieth Century" Part I, 1995)
"Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty." (Stephen J Gould, "Dinosaur in a Haystack: reflections in natural history", 1995)
"Imagining the unseeable is hard, because imagining means having an image in your mind. And how can you have a mental image of something you have never seen? Like perception itself, the models of science are embedded inextricably in the current worldview we call culture." (K C Cole, "First You Build a Cloud and Other Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life", 1999)
"Every culture has a shared pattern of thinking. It is the cement that holds a culture together, gives it unity. A culture's characteristic way of thinking is imbedded in its concept of the nature of reality, its world view. […] A change of world view not only brings about profound cultural changes, but also is responsible for what historians call a ‘change of age’. An age is a period of time in which the prevailing world view has remained relatively unchanged." (Russell L Ackoff, "Re-Creating the Corporation", 1999)
"One measure of the depth of a physical theory is the extent to which it poses serious challenges to aspects of our worldview that had previously seemed immutable." (Brian Greene, "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest, for the Ultimate Theory", 2000)
"When we acquire a language we don’t simply learn how to use the correct words, grammar and conventions for speaking appropriately in context, we also acquire a ‘world view’: an implicit set of assumptions and presuppositions regarding how to understand the world, who and what we are within it, and everything else that is entailed in categorising our experience." (Michael Forrester," Psychology of the Image", 2000)
"There is no ‘scientific worldview’ just as there is no uniform enterprise ‘science’- except in the minds of metaphysicians, school masters, and scientists blinded by the achievements of their own particular niche." (Paul Feyerabend, "Conquest of Abundance", 2001)
"It is not so much that particular languages evolve and then cause us to see the world in a given way, but that language and worldview develop side by side to the point where language becomes so ingrained that it constantly supports a specific way of seeing and structuring the world. In the end it becomes difficult to see the world in any other light." (F David Peat, "From Certainty to Uncertainty", 2002)
"Art is constructivist in nature, aimed at the deliberate refinement and elaboration of mental models and worldviews. These are the natural products of cognition itself, the outcome of the brain’s tendency to strive for the integration of perceptual and conceptual material over time. […] human culture is essentially a distributed cognitive system within which worldviews and mental models are constructed and shared by the members of a society. Artists are traditionally at the forefront of that process, and have a large influence on our worldviews and mental models." (Mark Turner, "The Artful Mind : cognitive science and the riddle of human creativity", 2006)
"Mathematics is more than a tool and language for science. It is also an end in itself, and as such, it has, over the centuries, affected our worldview in its own right." (Stephen Hawking, "God Created the Integers", 2007)
"Mathematics provides a good part of the cultural context for the worlds of science and technology. Much of that context lies not only in the explicit mathematics that is used, but also in the assumptions and worldview that mathematics brings along with it." (William Byers, "How Mathematicians Think", 2007)
"Beneath the problems that often seem so ‘given’ lie cultural norms and practices and ultimately whole worldviews. Our problems have contexts, backgrounds, roots. These in turn can be shifted and reconstructed. Problems can be circumvented or at least reshaped so that they arise in more manageable forms." (Anthony Weston, "How to Re-Imagine the World", 2007)
"Systemic problems trace back in the end to worldviews. But worldviews themselves are in flux and flow. Our most creative opportunity of all may be to reshape those worldviews themselves. New ideas can change everything." (Anthony Weston, "How to Re-Imagine the World", 2007)
"One of the things cognitive science teaches us is that when people define their very identity by a worldview, or a narrative, or a mode of thought, they are unlikely to change-for the simple reason that it is physically part of their brain, and so many other aspects of their brain structure would also have to change; that change is highly unlikely." (George Lakoff, "The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist's Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics", 2008)
"A worldview must be coherent, logical and adequate. Coherence means that the fundamental ideas constituting the worldview must be seen as proceeding from a single, unifying, overarching concept. A logical worldview means simply that the various ideas constituting it should not be contradictory. Adequate means that it is capable of explaining, logically and coherently, every element of contemporary experience." (M. G. Jackson, "Transformative Learning for a New Worldview: Learning to Think Differently", 2008)
"A theory is a speculative explanation of a particular phenomenon which derives it legitimacy from conforming to the primary assumptions of the worldview of the culture in which it appears. There can be more than one theory for a particular phenomenon that conforms to a given worldview. […] A new theory may seem to trigger a change in worldview, as in this case, but logically a change in worldview must precede a change in theory, otherwise the theory will not be viable. A change in worldview will necessitate a change in all theories in all branches of study." (M G Jackson, "Transformative Learning for a New Worldview: Learning to Think Differently", 2008)
"Great stories agree with our worldview. The best stories don't teach people anything new. Instead the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the thirst place." (Seth Godin, "All Marketers are Liars", 2009)
"It is hard to navigate across one’s environment without having some ideas, however coarse, about it. Indeed, to face any situation we must know whether it is real or imaginary, profane or sacred, sensitive or insensitive to our actions, and so on. This is why even lowly organisms develop, if not worldviews, at least rough sensory maps of their immediate environment – as noted by ethologists from the start. But it is generally assumed that only humans can build conceptual models of their environments. And, except for some philosophers, humans distinguish maps from the territories they represent." (Mario Bunge, "Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry", 2010)
"Worldviews are more a mental security blanket than a serious effort to understand the world." (Bryan Caplan, "The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies", 2011)
"Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize that a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word. The same worldview shift that is demanded by the resurrection of Jesus is the shift that will enable us to transform the world." (Nicholas T Wright, "Surprised by Hope: Original, provocative and practical", 2012)
"Also known as worldview, mental model, or mind-set, our perspective of the world is based on the sum total of our knowledge and experiences. It defines us, shaping our thoughts and actions because it represents the way we see ourselves and situations, how we judge the relative importance of things, and how we establish a meaningful relationship with everything around us." (Navi Radjou, Prasad Kaipa, "From Smart to Wise: Acting and Leading with Wisdom", 2013)
"If worldviews or metanarratives can be compared to lenses, which of them brings things into the sharpest focus? This is not an irrational retreat from reason. Rather, it is about grasping a deeper order of things which is more easily accessed by the imagination than by reason." (Alister McGrath, "If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life", 2014)
"In the absence of clear information - in the absence of reliable statistics - people did what they had always done: filtered available information through the lens of their worldview." (Zachary Karabell, "The Leading Indicators: A short history of the numbers that rule our world", 2014)
"It is always easier to deny reality than to allow our worldview to be shattered […]" (Naomi Klein, "This Changes Everything", 2014)
"A part is always too limited to explain the whole. You might picture a worldview as trying to stuff the entire universe into a box. Invariably, something will stick out of the box. Its categories are too ‘small’ to explain the world." (Nancy Pearcey, "Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes", 2015)
"A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundations on which we live and more and have our being." (James W Sire, "Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept", 2015)
"Science, at its core, is simply a method of practical logic that tests hypotheses against experience. Scientism, by contrast, is the worldview and value system that insists that the questions the scientific method can answer are the most important questions human beings can ask, and that the picture of the world yielded by science is a better approximation to reality than any other." (John Michael Greer, "After Progress: Reason and Religion at the End of the Industrial Age", 2015)
"A worldview consists of observations of the individual and other people with respect to the self, time and space, the natural and the supernatural and the sacred and profane. […] Beliefs about the world do not reside in the human mind in chaotic disorder; rather they form a latent system. A worldview cannot, however, be viewed as a well-organised network of cognitive models or a static collection of values; instead it should be regarded as the product of a process shaped by historical, cultural and social perspectives and contexts." (Helena Helve, "A longitudinal perspective on worldviews, values and identities", 2016)
"A worldview is simply someone's relatively organized understanding of what the world is actually like. [...] Worldviews have four elements that help us understand how a person's story fits together: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. ‘Creation’ tells us how things began, where everything came from (including us), the reason for our origins, and what ultimate reality is like. ‘Fall’ describes the problem (since we all know something has gone wrong with the world). ‘Redemption’ gives us the solution, the way to fix what went wrong. ‘Restoration’ describes what the world would look like once the repair begins to take place." (Greg Koukl, [interview with Jonathan Petersen], 2017)
