On The Idea of Worldview and Its Relation to Philosophy

In a discussion of worldviews and the social sciences, it is perhaps not amiss to begin with a paper which focuses on the history of the concept “worldview” and on traditional views of the relationship of worldview to philosophy.1 The history of a concept (the Germans speak of Begriffsgeschichte; the nearest Anglo-American equivalent is probably “history of ideas”) is significant because it allows us to observe the matrix in which an important idea first arose, and the ideological company it has since kept. This is especially important for a tradition like that of Dutch neo-Calvinism, which maintains that there are close ties between intellectual history and the spiritual struggle in which Christian academics are involved. Similar considerations apply to the importance of dealing with the relationship of worldview to philosophy, even at a conference devoted to the social sciences. Although Positivism continues to have a powerful impact on many social scientists, including Christians, the intellectual heirs of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck have a special appreciation for the crucial role philosophy —or at least many of the issues traditionally associated with philosophy —plays in both research and theorizing in the special sciences. The importance of philosophy is especially apparent in the social sciences, and in scholarship that seeks to bring the Christian faith into integral connection with the scientific enterprise. A significant, and perhaps dominant, strand in the tradition represented by the Free University of Amsterdam and itsyounger Reformed sister institutions has always been that philosophy is a key link between faith and scholarship, like the gearbox which connects the motor of a car to its wheels. I propose, therefore, to discuss the history of the idea of worldview, or Weltanschauung, and to sketch various conceptions of its relation to philosophy.