Worldviews |
Configuring pages
ABSTRACT Jerome Bruner suggests that the "cognitive revolution" of the 1950s turned research in Psychology away from "overt, objective responses," to what subjects "knew, how they acquired knowledge and used it." This, Bruner goes on to argue, "inevitably led to the question of how knowledge was represented in the mind" In this context, Nelson Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking opened the door to the role narratives played in the ways we organize knowledge. Two early anthropologists, Ruth Benedict and Alfred Kroeber understood cultures as configurations. Clifford Geertz's conception of cultural systems lead to Robert Doran's study of Christianity as a world view. The concept has also been used by William Cobern and colleagues in their studies of beliefs that dispose young persons to study science. In addition, cognitive linguists have revisited the idea. Alfred Schutz' phenomenological description of the "life-world" matches the concept of a world view. And, Wilhelm Dilthey made the concept central to his view of Verstehen—how we understand ourselves and others. |
In the previous section, "Personal Histories," I argued that we embed the memories we have of past experiences in our life in what we remember about the world, along synchronic and diachronic axes through which we organize our world views, our belief systems.
In Discourse Analysis: An Introduction, Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Dionysis Goutsos remark that Jerome Bruner's
... influential studies acknowledge the centrality of narrative as a mode of organizing not just discourse but also human knowledge and interaction. As Bruner has asserted, 'we org anise our experience and our memory of human happenings mainly in the form of narrative — stories, excuses, myths, reasons for doing and not doing and so on' (1991: 4). Narrative is so powerful as to encapsulate an individual's sense of the world (i.e. our subjective reality). As such, it is a form not only of representing but also of constituting reality (cf. ibid.: 5).
From his perspective, Bruner suggests that the "cognitive revolution" of the 1950s turned research in Psychology away from "overt, objective responses," to what subjects "knew, how they acquired knowledge and used it." This, Bruner goes on to argue, "inevitably led to the question of how knowledge was represented in the mind" (94). In "A Brief History of Memory Research," Gordon H. Bower identifies the 50s and 60s as a period in which "major momentum" was given to memory research (Tulving, Craik, 2000, 14).
Bruner goes on to credit Nelson Goodman with the view that ""The world of appearance, the very world we live in, is 'created' by mind. The activity of world making is, for Goodman," not accomplished "with hands but with minds, or rather with language or other symbol systems" (1984, 42).
In Ways of WorldMaking, Goodman observes:
We do not make a new world every time we take [symbols] apart or put them together in another way; but worlds may differ in that not everything belonging to one belongs to the other. The world of the Eskimo who has not grasped the comprehensive concept of snow differs not only from the world of the Samoan but also from the world of the New Englander who has not grasped the Eskimo's distinctions. (8-9)
In The Stories We LIve By, Dan McAdams—the chair of Clinical Psychology, Personality Psychology and Director of the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern—argues that young persons create their life-stories to form their identities. These life stories are embedded in the larger story of their world views. He quotes Erik Erikson's Young Man Luther on this particular point:
We will call what young people in their teens and early twenties look for in religion and other dogmatic systems ideology. At the most it is a militant system with uniformed members and uniform goals; at the least, it is a "way of life," or what the Germans call, Weltanschaung a world view which is consonant with existing theory, available knowledge, and common sense, and yet is significantly more: an utopian outlook, a cosmic mood, or a doctrinal logic, all shared as self-evident beyond any need for demonstration. (41.)
The conception of a world view, which was resonant for 19th century thinkers such as Wilhelm Dilthey, fell out of favor during the first half of the 20th century when researchers avoided dealing with the mind, it has modestly come back into favor as the cognitive revolution spreads.
[Constructing Worlds] [Anthropological conceptions of World Views] [Cultural Systems of Beliefs] [Pedagogical Uses of Wv] [Cog Linguistic Uses of Wv] [Alfred Schutz] [Wilhelm Dilthey]
anthropological conceptions of world views as configurations
Prior to the cognitive revolution, several well-know anthropologists viewed cultures as configurations--interrelated beliefs and practices. In a chapter devoted to the research of Alfred Kroeber,
an early 20th century anthropologist, Jerry D. Moore begins subsection, "Culture and Configurations," with the remark:
Kroeber was not interested in mere minutiae; he was also concerned with the broad patterns of culture that characterized entire societies, or what he referred to as major styles that marked particular cultural configurations. Analogous to Benedict's concept discussed in chapter 6, Kroeber states that "patterns are those arrangements or systems of internal relationship which give to any culture its coherence or plan, and keep it from being a mere accumulation of random bits" (1948:131). Such patterns, "or configurations or Gestalts," Kroeber wrote, "are what seem to me to be most productive to distinguish or formulate in culture" (1952c:5). (italics mine, 69)
A contemporary anthropologist also influenced by Frans Boas, Ruth Benedict, also understood culture to be a "configuration." As Philip Carl Salzman notes in the "Culture Patterns and Configurations" section of his Understanding Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theory,
Benedict's ([1935] 1961:ch. 3) third general understanding is that a culture is not just a collection of various customs, norms, institutions, values, and practices that have been selected from the range of human possibilities. Rather, each culture is integrated into a whole that tends toward consistency. All aspects of behavior and of organization are "made over into consistent patterns in accordance psychology, which argued that human perception grasps overall patterns rather than a multitude of details. Benedict ([1935] 1961:31) argues that "adequate social orders can be built indiscriminately upon a great variety of these foundations," and that any institution or emphasis that serves as the dominant one in a culture has been developed far beyond its original purpose. In other words, the crystallization of a culture pattern is not a necessary result of circumstances, but rather is a creative formulation of the human imagination. Benedict's theory can justly be called configurationalism. (italics mine, 69-70)
[Constructing Worlds] [Anthropological conceptions of World Views] [Cultural Systems of Beliefs] [Pedagogical Uses of Wv] [Cog Linguistic Uses of Wv] [Alfred Schutz] [Wilhelm Dilthey]
cultural systems of belief as world views
More recently, Clifford Geertz understands culture as a system in a way that reflects Kroeber and Benedict. In the Religion As a Cultural System chapter of The Interpretation of Culture, Geertz writes:
As we are to deal with meaning, let us begin with a paradigm: viz., that sacred symbols function to synthesize a people's ethos—the tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style-and mood —and their world view—the picture they have of the way things in sheer actuality are, their most comprehensive ideas of order. In religious belief and practice a group's ethos is rendered intellectually reasonable by being shown to represent a way of life ideally adapted to the actual state of affairs the world view describes, while the world view is rendered emotionally convincing by being presented as an image of an actual state of affairs peculiarly well-arranged to accommodate such a way of life. (italics mine, 89-90)
Geertz' point is easily confirmed by a brief examination of historical research on systems of religious beliefs.
In Birth of a Worldview: Early Christianity in its Jewish and Pagan Context, Robert Doran, considers Christianity as a cultural system, following Geertz:
The second way in which this book differs from other treatments of early Christian intellectual history lies in the questions that undergird its structure. I try to treat early Christianity as a worldview, a religion. I attempt to ask of early Christianity the questions that a student of any religion has to ask: How does the religion structure the world? And how does it explain suffering and 'death? In his famous essay on religion as a cultural system, Clifford Geertz underscores that every religion has to formulate conceptions of a general order of existence.4 The world has to be comprehensible, not chaotic, have an order and structure that make sense of, and give meaning to, everyday incidents. Structure here means not only the placing of the earth, moon, sun, and stars in sequence, which can be important parts of a worldview, but also and primarily the designation of where the source of power lies in the universe. (italics mine, 6-7)
Taking a "worldview approach" to the study of cultures is common: For example, the study of one of the tribes in India, Mythos and Logos of the Warlis: A Tibal Worldview, Avellino Remedios compiled an ethnography about the Warlis. His materials were edited by Ajay Dandekar. In his "Introduction" to the volume, Dandekar indicates that the study is "focused on the myths and rituals" of the Warlis (13). The first chapter concerns the Bhagats.
Bhagats, the "wise-men" of the Warlis are the carriers and propagators of the Warli world view, which the community has acquired through its long existence in the forest. The knowledge of the medicinal plants in the terrain they live and the understanding of the different environmental parameters that regulate the Warli life are envisaged in their belief system. The Warli belief system thus is a manifestation of an intellectual attempt on the part of Warlis to understand the human behaviour and the nature. The rituals and beliefs of Warlis are adaptive to their living conditions. Thus, Warlis in a true sense are the "jwigalace raja" (Kings of the forest) and Bhagats are the "wise-men" of the forest.(17)
A parallel research effort to preserve a cultural heritage has been undertaken by the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations. In his "Introduction" to Kemet and the African WorldView, a collection of papers from an ASCAC conference, Maulana Karenga writes:
This volume seeks to explore and suggest the outlines of an African worldview in governance, history, spirituality and philosophy, and creative production as evidenced in Kemetic civilization. It is self-consciously a restorative project, an attempt to restore that which lay in ruins for centuries, a legacy unequalled in antiquity, and to explore the lessons it offers us today in conceiving and building our cultural future. Within this grand and awesome task, we realize the incipient character of our work, but we also understand the urgency of our engagement. For as King Kheti, father of Merikare taught, "Even one day is a donation to eternity and every hour is a contribution to the future." (xv)
James H. Olthuis, Senior Member in Philosophical Theology at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, summarizes a religious conception of world views in “On Worldviews”:
A worldview (or vision of life) is a framework or set of fundamental beliefs through which we view the world and our calling and future in it. This vision need not be fully articulated: it may be so internalized that it goes largely unquestioned; it may not be explicitly developed into a systematic conception of life; it may not be theoretically deepened into a philosophy; it may not even be codified into creedal form; it may be greatly refined through cultural-historical development. Nevertheless, this vision is a channel for the ultimate beliefs which give direction and meaning to life. It is the integrative and interpretative framework by which order and disorder are judged; it is the standard by which reality is managed and pursued; it is the set of hinges' on which all our everyday thinking and doing turns.
Although a vision of life is held only by individuals, it is communal in scope and structure. Since a worldview gives the terms of reference by which the world and our place in it can be structured and illumined, a worldview binds its adherents together into community. Allegiance to a common vision promotes the integration of individuals into a group. At times communality of vision not only binds people together, but also, ironically, provides them with the tools and vocabulary to advance with greater sophistication their internal differences. (29)
[Constructing Worlds] [Anthropological conceptions of World Views] [Cultural Systems of Beliefs] [Pedagogical Uses of Wv] [Cog Linguistic Uses of Wv] [Alfred Schutz] [Wilhelm Dilthey]
uses of the concept "world view" in science
The volume in which Olthuis's essay appears, Stained Glass: World Views and Social Science is the proceedings of a conference sponsored in part by The Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. Its editors note that "If our first concern is with worldviews, our second is with the way worldviews affect science."
Perspectives on the World: An Interdisciplinary Reflection brings together a theoretical physicist, several philosophers, two engineers, a sociologist, and psychiatrist who, as the cover states, "make a contribution to the construction of a cohesive view of the whole [world], on the basis of their own discipline, but also in mutual dialogue." They are members of the worldviews group, a non-profit organization "unwilling to resign itself to [a] situation of fragmentation and disintegration and is calling for integrating world-view research" (8), Summarizing the conception of a worldview given in the book that inaugurated the organization, World Views: From Fragmentation to Integration, the coauthors write:
A world view can be defined as a coherent whole of concepts and propositions, enabling one to form a global picture of reality which can incorporate as many elements of one's experience as possible. A world view offers clarity regarding man's place in can one evade the intuitive sensing of that which transcends man and the world, and questions of destiny.
The Worldviews group draw a resonant analogy considering the role of mental models
and mapping the earlier delineation of configuring configuration:
World view or World views?
We continually speak of world views in the plural because a unique and monolithic world view—considering the immense complexity of reality—will remain an unattainable ideal. These world views illuminate various aspects of one and the same reality, and partially overlap each other. They must be as reliable as possible and they may not contradict each other. As with maps, world views should be in agreement in areas where they overlap. World views can be rightly compared to a set of maps showing the geological, political and economic situation, which are bundled together in one atlas. There are many maps but there is only one world.
Though the concept of a world view is not much used in sciences other than anthropology, William Cobern makes an interesting case for using it in science education. In , Everyday Thoughts about Nature, he argues persuasively that some students have difficulties entering the "culture of science" because of their cultural backgrounds. The obvious examples would be persons raised in religious climates hostile to science. Cobern's thesis is captured in his subtitle, A Worldview Investigation of Important Concepts Students Use to Make Sense of Nature with Specific Attention of Science. Cobern draws upon M Kearney's 1984 book, Worldview, for his account of cultural frameworks:
culturally organized macrothought: those dynamically inter-related basic assumptions of a people that determine much of their behavior and decision making, as well as organizing much of their body of symbolic creations...and ethnophilosophy in general. (1984, p.1)
[Constructing Worlds] [Anthropological conceptions of World Views] [Cultural Systems of Beliefs] [Pedagogical Uses of Wv] [Cog Linguistic Uses of Wv] [Alfred Schutz] [Wilhelm Dilthey]
a cognitive linguistic conception of a world view
Our personal mental maps of the world are “worldviews” usually expressed in linguistic symbols and structure as a narrative moving through time and space, as a history.
In the view of cognitive linguists like Ronald Langacker, we construe the world in which we live by constructing a virtual model of it in our minds as Fauconnier suggests. In this context, the mental spaces we construct are spaces that are inhabited, that is, persons and things are in positions with respect to each other as defined by the perspectives that can be taken on the events called up in our mind as frames for understanding the situations in which we find ourselves.
And, as David Lee suggests in his Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction
In principle everything that a speaker knows about the world is a potential part of the frame for a particular term, even though some aspects of that knowledge base are more immediately relevant to a particular term than others (and therefore more strongly activated when the term is used).
Thus from a Cognitive Linguistic point of view, a world view is a conceptual framework that expresses a cognitive framework.
Personal frameworks belong to individuals and in this sense are unique. However, many parts of an initials conceptual framework matches up well enough with corresponding frames in other persons so that they can be shared in communications. Indeed, discursive communities exist in which considerable portions of the frames (concepts) in an individual's framework match up with many others in the group. However, statistically speaking, it is likely that more concepts in an individual's conceptual framework will elicit different memories than vice-versa. Generally speaking, it is easiest to communicate in depth with persons with whom we are familiar—friends, family, neighbors, associates. Even so, it sometimes discover that a person we thought we "knew," is not someone we any longer know.
[Constructing Worlds] [Anthropological conceptions of World Views] [Cultural Systems of Beliefs] [Pedagogical Uses of Wv] [Cog Linguistic Uses of Wv] [Alfred Schutz] [Wilhelm Dilthey]
Alfred Schutz's concept of the "life-World" (lebenswelt)
Thomas Luckmann in his posthumous reconstruction of Alfred Schutz' The Structures of the Life-World, provides for us a phenomenological description of the way we typically experience our world views:
I always find myself in a world which is for me taken for granted and self-evidently "real." I was born into it and I assume that it existed before me. It is the unexamined ground of everything given in my experience, as it were, the taken-for-granted frame in which all the problems which I must overcome are placed. This world appears to me in coherent arrangements of well-circumscribed Objects having determinate properties.
Moreover, I simply take it for granted that other men also exist in this my world, and indeed not only in a bodily manner like and among other objects, but rather as endowed with a consciousness that is essentially the same as mine. Thus from the outset, my life-world is not my private world but, rather, is intersubjective; the fundamental structure of its reality is that it is shared by us. Just as it is self-evident to me, within the natural attitude, that I can, up to a certain point, obtain knowledge of the lived experiences of my fellow-men—for example, the motives of their acts—so, too, I also assume that the same holds reciprocally for them with respect to me. (4)
For Luckmann and Schulz, the life-world is stratified. Our lived-experience ranges from our sense of being in a physical world, through fantasy worlds, to dream worlds (22ff). Our life-world is arranged according to various places (35ff) and times (45ff). It has social spheres (59ff). Our "stock of knowledge" of the world is situated (99ff), typical (229ff), social conditioned (243ff), and subjective (261ff). An important link to the conception of a world view as a configuration is Luckmann and Schutz' belief in the "biographical character of the stock of knowledge" (111ff):
Each step of my explication and understanding of the world is based at any given time on a stock of previous experience, my own immediate experiences as well as such experiences as are transmitted to me from my fellow-men and above all from my parents, teachers, and so on. All of these communicated and im¬mediate experiences are included in a certain unity having the form of my stock of knowledge, which serves me as the reference schema for the actual step of my explication of the world. All of my experiences in the life-world are brought into relation to this schema, so that the objects and events in the life-world confront me from the outset in their typical character. (7).
Luckmann and Schultz' conception of the life-world is drawn from a social perspective. I turn to a similar "phenomenological"
account of world views that is drawn from an historical perspective.
[Constructing Worlds] [Anthropological conceptions of World Views] [Cultural Systems of Beliefs] [Pedagogical Uses of Wv] [Cog Linguistic Uses of Wv] [Alfred Schutz] [Wilhelm Dilthey]
Wilhelm dilthey's conception of Weltanschauungslehre
In Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason, Michael Ermarth summarizes Dilthey's conception of a world view:
Dilthey maintained that the process of living requires an over-arching orientation or interpretation: life engenders an attitude toward life (Gesamtlebensgefahl) which in turn conditions our further conduct of life (GS 18:175). A person is drawn to make sense of his own existence and mind demands a stable framework to meet the baffling multiplicity, contingency, and imponderability of life—and especially the open prospect of the future. Life presents us with ceaseless change, and yet for that very reason it requires constancy and steadiness on the part of the living subject. Dilthey used a variety of terms to suggest the encompassing function of this mental disposition; it is a "fastness" (Halt, Festigkeit, Lebensverhalten), "ground" (Boden), or basic mental stance (Grundstellung, Bewusstseinsstellung). "Every mental attitude strives for a point which is beyond relativity" (GS 5:415). Persons tend to confront the awesome variegation in life by means of the formation of a world-view. This formation takes place over the course of a lifetime and is never "completed," yet it manifests consistency and wholeness. The world-view is the more or less articulated and "objectivated" form of the acquired coherence of personality which otherwise remains tacit and unreflective. (324-325)
Ermarth points argues that, although many commentators believed Dilthey's conception of Weltanschauungslehre to be a marginal dimension of his thought, it was central to it. Dilthey believed that:
We cannot live our life without adopting a stance toward it and we do this from the vantage point of our own individual consciousness. ... [A world view] is a coherent interpretation of our total experience. The world-view is at one remove from reality—it is not reality itself, but an interpretation of reality (GS 5:379). This interpretation is not merely an aggregate of separate experiences but tends toward an integrated whole (Gebilde, Gefuge). The world-view is not given to us like a discrete fact or object in the world; it is a total outlook compounded of experience, reflection, and interpretation. ... The world-view unites different levels of meaning and integrates different aspects of experience. In H. A. Hodges' apt phrase, it is "the response of the whole mind to our experience as a whole."3 (325)
Like Schulz, Dilthey did not regard a world view as
knowledge, science, or "theory" in the strict sense: it might best be called a belief-system. It is not simply the construction of purely rational thought, for, as Dilthey stresses, man does not think, let alone live, by sole means of theoretical reason. The world-view is not a logical system of judgments but a configuration which integrates cognition, volition, and affection; it is a synthesis of facts, values, and ends. (325)
As H. A. Hodges points out:
Every Weltanschauung is the result of reflection on experience. However dubious in detail a given Weltanschauung may be, and however the various Weltanschauungen may differ, still each of them is based on an experience which, while it may be partial and one-sided, is genuine as far as it goes. (99)
I now turn to Dilthey's conception of Verstehen, which is the inspiration for my reflections on configuring configurations.
jjs
[Constructing Worlds] [Anthropological conceptions of World Views] [Cultural Systems of Beliefs] [Pedagogical Uses of Wv] [Cog Linguistic Uses of Wv] [Alfred Schutz] [Wilhelm Dilthey]
Notes:
. [(Kroeber was Clyde Kluckhohn's co-author in the composition of Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, a precurssor of conceptual logistics research.)] ... 
. [(See Johnson-Laird, P. (1999). "Mental Models." The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences. R. A. Wilson and F. C. Keil. Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press: 525-527. for a delineation of mental models. It should be noted that mental models can be embedded in more inclusive mental models. Since mental models are both of experiences and of concepts, a mental model of a personal experience can be embedded in a conception of the world. 526)] ...
. [(Dilthey is considered a phenomenologist by some of his commentators—Kluback & Weinbaum 1957, Muller-Vollmer 1963, Owensby 1994—but not by others—Hodges 1949, Makkreel 1975, Ermarth, 1978, de Mul 2004.)] ...
[(I offer Ermarth's summary of Dilthey's conception of a world view rather than quote from Dilthey because Dilthey's account is very dense. See below.
Kluback and Weinbaum translated the section quoted below of chapter 1 of Dilthey's ""The Types of World Views and Their Unfoldment Within the Metaphysical System" from Gesammelte Schriften Vol. VIII, pp. 75-118 published as Dilthey's Philosophy of History. In "The Structure of a World View," Dilthey writes:
... world views tend towards uniformities in which the structure of psychological life is expressed. The foundation is invariably a cosmic picture: it originates from our perceptive behavior which itself follows immutable laws of phases of cognition. First we had observed occurrences within us and objects outside of us. Next, however, we clarify such observations by emphasizing fundamental relations of reality with the help of the elementary operations of thinking. Once these observations have receded, we depict and classify them in our world of ideas which lifts them above fortuitousness. In these preliminary phases the spirit gained in stability and freedom, but it completes its dominion over reality in the region of judgments and concepts, where finally the relatedness and true being of reality are adequately and uniformly comprehended. When a world view evolves fully, the process regularly begins in these phases of the cognition of reality. On the basis of a typified cognition there rests another typical behavior, and this, too, follows analogous phases according to immutable laws. Becoming conscious of our self, we enjoy the full measure of our existence; we ascribe to objects and persons around us a certain effectual value because our existence was enhanced and broadened by them. These values are then determined by us according to their prospective influence, useful or harmful; and while we measure them, we are seeking an absolute standard of measurement. Thus conditions, persons, and objects assume their importance in relation to the whole of reality, and this whole itself is stamped with meaningfulness. While we pass through all these psychological phases, a second layer, as it were, is built in the
structure of the world view; the cosmic picture becomes the foundation for a full valuation of life and for a comprehension of the world. In the same way that psychological life followed certain laws, the valuation of life and the comprehension of the universe lead to an upper level of our consciousness, another layer, if we will: here we find the ideals, the highest good, and the supreme principles, in all of which the world view finally receives its practical energy—as it were, the sharpness with which it penetrates our life, the outer world and our very soul. At this stage the world view becomes creative, formative, indeed reforming. But even this highest layer of the world view is subject to change through various phases. From momentary intent, striving, and tendency there develop permanent aims which are directed toward the realization of a concept; here also is determined the relation between means and ends, the choice between goals, the selection of means of attainment, and the final systematization of all aims into a highest order of our practical behavior—a comprehensive plan of life, a highest good, the highest norms of action, an ideal of shaping one's personal life as well as that of society. (26-27)
)] ...
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