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1.2. Definitions
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The term "worldview" is so general and self-explicatory thai it tends 10 be used rather
loosely. "Cognition," "ethos," "ideology," "cosmology" and other related concepts arc
often preferred. I Beside these, "culture" has come to be used in Clyde Kluckhohn's broad
definition, which covers all these aspects. The use of "culture" in this comprehensive
sense would account for the sparse mention of "worldview" in anthropological literature.
In a chapter seeking to elucidate the concept of "cullure," Kluckhohn successively
paraphrases it as: .t
... the social legacy the individual acquires from his group, ... a way of
thinking, feeling, and believing, an abstraction from behaviour, a set of
standardized orientations to recurrent problems, learned behaviour, a
mechanism for the normative regulation of behaviour, a set of techniques
for adjusting both to the external environment and to other men. 2
Robert Redfield's definition of "worldview"--or rather one of its formulations--comes
close to Kluckhohn's description of "culture":
... lworld view is] the way a people characteristically look outward upon
the universe.. included in "world view" may be the conceptions of what
ought to be as well as of what is; and included may be the characteristic
ways in which experiences are kept together or apart -- the patterns of
thought-- and the affective as well as the cognitive aspect of these things
also. "World view" may be used to include the forms of thought and the
most comprehensive atlitudes towards life. But if there is an
emphasized meaning in the phrase "world view," I think it is in the
suggestion it carries of the structure of things as man is aware of them. It
is in the way we see ourselves in relation to all else. 3
Redfield defines "worldview" versus its kin concepts, proposing that:
... if "culture" suggests the way a people look to an alllhropologist,
"worldview" suggests how everything looks to a people. 4
I Redfield notes lh