Worldview is a complex and dialectically compound concept that helps top understand perception, beliefs derived from experiences, and persistent ideas.
literal meaning | figurative meaning | three lessons | authors | artists | earth science | example
| two words: | world | view |
one meaning |
our experience | personal perspectives |
related meaning |
the actual universe | social prejudices |
Figuratively, any worldview --is a combined personal feeling or sensitivity for and a social understanding of reality-- as such a view of the world is always based on a pattern language, or paradigm that provides a context and a meaning for a society's, or a person's worldview. This figurative meaning is often implicit, hidden in the context in which a concept is presented.
For example the way people perceive space, in the industrial western world or Japan, is based on a pattern language of two and three dimensions.
This pattern language involves three lessons on how to interpret the world and our ideas about that reality we call the world, because we are biased, prejudiced and prone to errors.
Octavio Paz about how we interpret the world.
Lesson One | lesson Two | lesson Three
| A Triptych | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 |
of three competing views of the world. |
||
| Image |  |
 |
 |
| Captions | "Fiat lux" |
Shiva's dance |
black hole ! |
| Meaning | Christianity |
Hindu creation & destruction |
Contemporary astronomy |
Lesson Two: Worldviews are complex emotional underpinnings of rational beliefs about the world.
Security, emotional reassurance is what people find appealing about their particular worldviews.
Different rational elements blend to reinforce bias or even prejudice in what people believe.
Juno Diaz | Annie Dillard | John Dewey | Murray Gell Mann | Ian Tattersall | Terry Tempest Williams | Donald Worster
Artist Winslow Homer's "Blue Boat" representing two intrepid people exploring the world of the Adirondack Mountains.
Lesson Three: interpreting these pictures that behave as informative symbols.
| Meaning | "Fiat Lux" | Shiva's dance | Black hole! |
|
example |
let
there be light |
rebirth
& renewal |
infinite
mass |
|
underpinning |
time
as an arrow |
circularity
of time |
one
direction |
|
Sect |
Christianity |
Hinduism |
Quantum
relativity |
|
residual faith |
eternal
life |
reincarnation |
nihilist |
Consider the murals of Diego Rivera as a new way of seeing the world.
Artists Diego Rivera and Freda Kahlo, in a May Day parade, 1929.
Writers who address the perspectives from which we view and how we think about the world:
Lynn Margulis | Ernst Mayr | T. E. Hulme | Octavio Paz | Michio Kaku | E. O. Wilson
Lessons One | Two | Three
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