Defining Worldview Terminology
This is a set of beliefs and assumptions that fundamentally shapes how an individual or group perceives and interprets the world.
What is worldview?
This element of worldview deals with the formal and informal rules and roles that govern how people live together, including issues of power and status.
Hint: one of the 7 elements
What is society?
When a society creates a written constitution and holds free and fair elections, they are demonstrating a specific value within this system.
What is political system?
The two major environmental factors that directly influence a society's worldview, including its economy and physical survival.
Hint: one of the 7 elements
What are geography and resources (or climate and resources)?
This is the worldview in which a society either uses mechanical means to measure it or natural means.
Hint: one of the 7 elements
What is time?
A personal sense of who one is, which is heavily influenced by one's worldview and group affiliations.
What is identity?
This element of worldview answers the questions: "Who controls resources?" and "How are goods and services produced and distributed?"
Hint: one of the 7 elements
What is Economy?
When a culture places the health of the entire community above the desires of any single person, it is demonstrating a focus on this concept, as opposed to individualism.
What is collectivism? Or what is the collective good?
A large geographic barrier, like a high mountain range or a vast ocean, can lead a society to adopt a worldview of this term.
What is isolation?
The term for a society composed of people from many different cultural, religious, and linguistic backgrounds.
What is a pluralistic society (or pluralism)?
I will also accept multicultural society.
A moral standard or principle of behaviour that a person or group judges as important or valuable in life.
Hint: One of the 7 elements
What is value? or What are values?
A society's view on the meaning and purpose of life, death, and the existence of a higher power falls under this element.
What is Religious viewpoint?
When a society switches from a barter system to using currency, this element of their worldview has undergone a change.
Hint: One of the 7 elements
What is economy?
This process occurs when a society's worldview changes because of the exchange of ideas, technology, or traditions with another culture.
What is cultural contact (or diffusion)?
This term is used for the concept that all people in a society are entitled to equal treatment, regardless of differences.
What is equality?
To properly understand an event in history, you must look at it from this, or the viewpoint of the people living at that time.
What is perspective or point of view?
This element dictates who has access to information and what ways of knowing (like scientific observation or oral tradition) are accepted as truth.
Hint: One of the 7 elements
What is knowledge?
A person who believes that success is achieved through hard work and determination, regardless of one's background, has a merit-based view of this element.
Hint: one of the 7 elements
What is society? (Societal structure)
The part of a society that is most clearly and immediately impacted by a major natural disaster, such as a prolonged drought or a massive flood.
What is environment?
What historians call factors like ideology, religion, and philosophy that shape a worldview, as opposed to geography or climate.
What are internal factors?
Worldview acts as a conceptual lens that filters and organizes information, experiences, and this other word for deeply held convictions.
Hint: one of the 7 elements
What are beliefs?
This component defines how a society sees its physical surroundings, including the need for preservation or the right to exploit natural resources.
Hint: NOT one of the 7 elements
What is the environment or relationship with nature?
The creation of a public, mandatory education system reflects the importance a society places on this element of its worldview.
Hint: One of the 7 elements
What is knowledge?
This factor includes a person's age, gender, and economic status, all of which contribute to an individual's unique worldview even within a shared culture.
What is context (or social and personal experience)?
A major shift in the way an individual or society views the world, often brought on by a significant event or new idea.
What is a paradigm shift?