Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Worldviews

Abstract

In this chapter we use philosophical dimensions, criteria, and tests to better appreciate the respective strengths and weaknesses of religious, scientific, and philosophical worldviews. Religious worldviews are illustrated with the conflict between Intelligent Design and Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. We recognize psychological and societal strengths of religions, but also their limitations and failures. The strength of scientific worldviews is illustrated with systems theory, a problem-solving attitude, and universal Darwinism, while their weaknesses stem from their focus on objectivity only and thus their neglect of values and action, which are essential components for psychological and societal functioning. We then present philosophical worldviews as an attempt to build coherent and comprehensive worldviews, in the spirit of synthetic philosophizing. We discuss the pros and cons of promoting uniformity or diversity of worldviews. To understand what it means to answer worldview questions, we compare them to axioms, systems of equations, and problems to solve. It is argued that nonviolent communication can be very useful when worldview conflicts become emotional. Finally we discuss an extreme worldview agenda embracing a maximal scope in space and time, thereby naturally introducing the cosmological perspective of Parts II and III.

Open Questions

An architect does not leave his scaffolding after he has constructed a building. But here the situation is different. Worldview construction is more like a building site, in constant construction and reconstruction. Leaving some scaffolding is not the most aesthetic practice, but is very useful to facilitate and stimulate further improvements. The “Open Questions” sections at the end of each part or main chapter provide questions for further research. Such open questions are even necessary if we take our analogy with thermodynamics and the idea of open philosophical systems seriously (see Sect. 2.2.3).

• Philosophical agendas. Studying philosophical agendas is key to understanding different philosophical schools, trends, and traditions. It would be well worth writing a history of philosophical agendas, to better understand their evolution.

• More criteria. The list of criteria we presented is a starting point, to be further refined and elaborated by other philosophers, possibly with different or additional criteria. The criteria may also be refined or improved through studies in the history of philosophy. Conversely, the criteria can help to describe the complexity of the history of philosophy.

• Worldviews and developmental psychology. It is important to understand how the worldview of an individual changes through his or her life. We have not integrated developmental psychology fully into our worldview framework. This is something that remains to be done. Some useful starting points could be the works of Gebser (1986); Kohlberg (1981, 1984); Koltko-Rivera (2004); Laske (2008), etc. It would thus be possible to tackle questions such as: How do you evolve and develop your own worldview? What will trigger a change in your worldview? How much are you attached to your worldview? How can you change from one worldview to another?

• Worldviews and metacognition. We saw the importance of making one’s worldview explicit. This cognition about cognition is studied by psychologists as metacognition (see e.g. Kitchner 1983; Metcalfe and Shimamura 1994). How does metacognition affect the development of our worldviews? Can metacognition act as a catalyst?

• Interdisciplinarity and cognitive values. We focused in Chap. 2 on cognitive values in philosophy. However, an encyclopedist may be interested in a systematic definition of cognitive values, criteria, and agendas in all disciplines of knowledge, including mathematics, engineering, empirical sciences, history, art, or religion. Such a study would provide a different outlook on different domains of knowledge, where distinctions between disciplines would become continuous instead of discrete.

• In Chap. 2, we attempted to fulfill one of Adler’s (1965) conditions for improving philosophy as a discipline, namely by proposing nine criteria as standards of truth. But this is just one of the six conditions Adler identified. Two others are especially important to pursue:

  • Philosophy as a public enterprise. Having criteria was a necessary step to encourage philosophy as a public enterprise. This poses a challenge for the synthetic dimension of philosophy, which requires systemic consistency. Making the enterprise public involves supposing that questions or problems can be attacked piecemeal, one by one, so that it is not necessary to answer all the relevant questions in order to answer any subset of them. However, the challenge has at least been met for the dialectical dimension, with the construction of the Syntopicon by Adler, Hutchins, and their editorial team. Thanks to modern collaborative web technologies, such as editable “wiki” web pages, it is realistically possible to scale up such a collaborative effort. The project of a “wikidialectica” would be a great complementation of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. An encyclopedia traditionally presents facts, not arguments. Such a wikidialectica could be launched from the base provided by the Syntopicon (Adler 1952a, 1952b), since this work is now in the public domain.

  • Philosophy as a first-order inquiry. Philosophy should reconnect with first-order questions; i.e. about that which is and happens or about what humans should do and seek. Parts II and III of this book are an example of such an attempt. Indeed, we shall now tackle the first-order questions: Where does it all come from? Where are we going? What is good and what is evil?” We shall tackle them as mixed questions, reformulated in our present scientific context.

• The practical way to philosophical worldviews. An open question along the way to philosophical worldviews (Sect. 3.3.1) is that of further developing non-religious practices, rites, or prayers. Philosophers and thinkers have made various such proposals (see e.g. Comte 1890; Haeckel 1902; Sageret 1922; Huxley 1957; Apostel 1998; and contemporary secular humanism).