Welt·an·schau·ung (velt-AWN-shau-oong)
Noun.: German: Welt, world + Anschauung, view, observation, mystical contemplation.
A world view (or worldview) is a term to describe how one's beliefs influence one's view of the world. It is calqued from the German word Weltanschauung ("look onto the world"). [RETURN TO PROFILE]
Weltanschauung and cognitive philosophy:
One of the most important concepts in cognitive philosophy and generative sciences is the German concept of ‘Weltanschauung’. This expression refers to the 'wide worldview' or 'wide world perception' of a people. The Weltanschauung of a people originates from the unique world experience of a people--which they experience over several millennia. The language of a people reflects the Weltanschauung of that people in the form of its syntactic structures and untranslatable connotations and denotations.
A map of the world on the basis of Weltanschauung crosses political and cartographical borders because Weltanschauung is the product of both political borders and common experiences of a people from specific geographical regions, environmental-climatic conditions, economic resources, socio-cultural systems, and linguistic families. The work of the population geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza aims to show the gene-linguistic co-evolution of people.
The worldview map of the world would be similar to the linguistic map of the world. However, it would almost coincide with a map of the world drawn on a musical basis.
Weltanschauung as generative system:
A world view describes a consistent (to a varying degree) and integral sense of existence and provides a framework for generating, interpreting, and applying knowledge.
The linguistic relativity hypothesis of Benjamin Lee Whorf describes how the syntactic-semantic structures of a language become an underlying structure for the weltanschauung of a people through the organization of the causal perception of the world and the linguistic categorization of entities. As linguistic categorization emerges as a representation of worldview and causality, it further modifies social perception and thereby leads to a continual interaction between language and perception.
The theory (perhaps hypothesis) was well received in the late 1940's, but declined in prominence after a decade. In the 1990's new research has given further support for the linguistic relativity theory, in the works of Stephen Levinson and his team at the Max Planck institute for Psycholinguistics at Nijmegen, The Netherlands. The hypothesis has also gained attention through the works of Lera Boroditsky at MIT.
The 'construction of integrating worldviews' begins from fragments of worldviews offered to us by the different scientific disciplines and the various systems of knowledge. It is contributed to by different perspectives that exist in the world's different cultures. This is the main topic of research in the Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies.
Worldview and folk-epics:
As natural language becomes manifestation of world perception, the literature of a people with common weltanschauungen emerges as holistic representations of the wide world perception of that people. Thus the extent and commonality between world folk-epics becomes a manifestation of the commonality and extent of a worldview.
Epic poems are shared often by people across political borders and across generations. Examples of such epics include: the Nibelungenlied of the Germanic-Scandinavian people, The Silappadhikaram of the South Indian people, The Gilgamesh of the Mesopotamian-Sumerian civilization (and the people of the fertile crescent at large), The Arabian Nights of the Arabic world, and the Sundiata epic of the African people.
Influences of worldview:
The term denotes a comprehensive set of opinions, seen as an organic unity, about the world as the medium of human existence. Weltanschauung serves as a framework for generating various dimensions of human perception and experience like knowledge, politics, economics, religion, culture, science, and ethics.
For example Worldview of causality as uni-directional generates a framework giving rise to a monotheistic view of the world with a beginning and an end and a single great force with a single end. Eg: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. While a cyclical worldview of causality generates religious traditions which are circuitous and seasonal and wherein events and experiences recur in systematic patterns. Eg: Zoroastrianism and Hinduism.
These worldviews of causality not only underly religious traditions but also other aspects of thought like the purpose of history, political and economic theories, and systems like democracy, capitalism, socialism, communism, Marxism, and fascism.
The worldview of Linear and Non-linear causality generates various related/conflicting disciplines and approaches in scientific thinking. The weltanschauung of the temporal contiguity of act and event leads to underlying diversifications like Determinism vs. Free Will. A worldview of Free Will leads to disciplines that are governed by simple laws that remain constant and which are static and empirically predictable via the Scientific Method. While a worldview of Determinism generates disciplines that are governed by generative systems.
Science and naturalism, which reject the validity of explanations or theories making use of entities inaccessible to natural science (through observation, measurement, predictability, etc.), are not generally included in the same epistemological category as other worldviews, as they are based not on subjective beliefs or personal, irrational, psychological revelations, rather on the Scientific Method, which is a highly cautious and profoundly rational method of building an observable, testable, predictable, evidenced, coherent, cohesive, and objective understanding of the world.
Most of the above was culled and quilted piecemeal from dictionaries and weblopedias, and it took a polish to condense into a coherent precis of Weltanschauung. I think it's pretty straightforward, but it is still full of academic-speak, so in case any reader is left scratching her head, let me Break it Down:
The main reason we hold most of our of cultural, linguistic, religious, social, and historical beliefs and perceptions (and not someone else's--on the other side of the planet--who is alien to us) is because we fell out of a vagina on this side of the planet, rather than that side. If we desire to emerge from this hideous era (11,000 years) of violence, hatred, intolerance, genocide, repression, war, slavery, and all forms of grotesque inhumanity--we should be a little more rational and kill superstition.
Roman Tam was the grand godfather of Cantonese Pop music, and a dear old friend. Pictured here from left to right, Mr. Wong (a BKK bar owner), Roman Tam, Kary, me, and Ricky Tan (MTV Asia VJ). On all my trips to HK I always stayed at Roman's. He was a stellar performer. Known as the Cantonese Sinatra, Roman first appeared solo at Carnegie Hall in 1987. He was the best friend I had in China—he taught me how to enjoy dim sum, and took me for my first tea at the Kowloon Peninsula (after wading through the fans who mobbed him wherever we went). Roman died in 2002, and late at night when the air is wet and heavy, the city bright, and one of his Cantonese melodies echoes through my mind... I miss him desperately. God how I miss you "Loman"... Emperor of the Stage! xoxox
