Integral Worldview - Some Definitions
- Rick Bonetti
- Jul 5
- 3 min read
What is reality? Is it just what is material, scientifically objective, and quantifiable, or is there more to reality than our senses tell us? Is there an internal as well as an external reality? Are science and religion compatible? These are some of the big questions I am exploring on this website.
Here are some working definitions that relate to Integral Worldview:
Integral consciousness means integrating and bringing together disparate theories and systems of thought into a single coherent understanding of life, the universe, and everything.
Worldview refers to "the fundamental set of beliefs, values, and assumptions through which an individual or society interprets the world and their place in it." A worldview serves as an overarching interpretive framework, guiding how people perceive reality, make decisions, and evaluate right from wrong.
Lens of Reality - A worldview is like colored glasses that tint everything you see. A worldview shapes how all new experiences and information are processed.
Implicit & Explicit: Our worldviews are rarely questioned; they operate in the background as the "normal" way to view the world, only becoming obvious when they clash with differing perspectives.
Universal: Every person—regardless of whether they can articulate it—has a worldview.
The term "weltanschauung," a German expression for "world perception," highlights the deep connection between language and worldview, as introduced by philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
The most direct synonyms for worldview include philosophy, outlook, belief system, and ideology.
Steve McIntosh defines 'worldview' as "a coherent set of values and ideals that persists across multiple generations. Worldviews are large-scale cultural agreements about what is good, true, and beautiful. They give meaning to reality and help us understand the world. In fact, worldviews are arguably the basic units of cultural analysis and interpretation—the most fundamental structures of cultural evolution. These large-scale value systems are more than mere ideologies; they include numerous competing factions and exhibit internal contradictions."
Integral Philosophy "strongly affirms that the nested structure of transcendence and inclusion that is evident in cosmological and biological evolution can also be found in the domain of cultural evolution. Integral philosophy also goes beyond 'Big History' by recognizing what Teilhard called 'the within of things' - the interior dimensions of the coevolution of consciousness and culture." It should be noted that integral philosophy goes against the grain of contemporary social science discourse.
Developmental philosophy is "a philosophical perspective that emphasizes the moral and spiritual significance of the universe's continuous process of becoming, encompassing various philosophies like process philosophy, integral philosophy, and pragmatism, with key figures including Whitehead, Hegel, and McIntosh."
Integral Theory is a new understanding of how the influence of evolution affects the development of consciousness and culture) traces its founders to Georg Hegel, James Mark Baldwin, Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Jean Gebser, and Jürgen Habermas. The philosophy emerged to greater prominence in the late 1990's with leading thinkers such as Ken Wilbur and Steve McIntosh.
Integral Worldview is a “big picture view.” An integral worldview is one of the most comprehensive ways of organizing, understanding, and making sense of the entire scope of the world around us, human knowledge, methods, growth, and evolution. It is a complete and comprehensive approach to reality. Integral means that every aspect of human knowledge, ever discovered, has some important piece of truth. There must be a way to make sense of the total of all human knowledge and experience–from every culture, from every era, from every discipline.
Robb Smith, cofounder of Integral Life, says, 'Humans are 'fountains of meaning generation' - creating stories, theories, myths, ideas, parables, and other things to convey our interpretations.
References:
Delio, Ilia, and Andrew M. Davis, editors, Whitehead and Teilhard: from Organism to Omega, (2024)