A World View, also spelt as worldview is a term calqued from German word Weltanschauung ("look onto the world"); the latter one is still in wide use.
The term denotes a comprehensive set of opinions, seen as an organic unity, about the world as the medium and exercise of human existence: politics, economics, religion, culture, science, human values.
World view describes a consistent (to a varying degree) and integral sense of existence and provides a framework for generating, sustaining and applying knowledge.
At all times, religious and political teachings were bases for forming worldviews; in fact, they were often worldviews themselves. For example, christianity, islam, socialism, marxism, scientology may be called worldviews; at least they generate clearly identifiable worldviews.
Historically, world views changed little and slowly, achieving wide (and often unquestioning) support. Postmodernism has encouraged a proliferation of ever-changing Weltanschauungen.
paradigm, social reality, perspective, point of view, beliefRelated notions