The Four Worldview Quadrants
The chart above is inspired by John Vervaeke’s concept of worldview attunement. In it, two axes intersect to create four quadrants corresponding to four basic worldviews: the scientific, the religious, the individualist, and the romantic. This chart isn’t meant to represent any actual metaphysical realities. The interplay between objectivity and subjectivity is a deep philosophical topic beyond the scope of this chart. Rather it is an attempt to map out some of the common perspectives we encounter in the world and offer a theory of how they might relate to one another. Ultimately, it is an attempt to accommodate the best of each worldview in order to achieve what Vervaeke calls “having an optimal grip on the world.”
The Scientific Worldview: Apprehension Through Observation
The scientific worldview is largely objective. Empirical observations are methodically replicated to produce models of the world that are universal and predictable. While this is a powerful method of understanding reality, science can’t perceive any meaning behind the models it creates. Science can tell you “how” but it can’t tell you “why.” This leads some scientists to assume that there may not be any meaning in life. As Richard Dawkins said, “Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent.”
Within the scientific quadrant I’ve listed four sub-views ranging from centrist to extreme: humanism, empiricism, positivism and determinism. I’m not an expert on epistemology so this is a rough sample. Humanism is a centrist worldview that accommodates morals and ethics from other domains in a rationalist perspective. Empiricism holds that we can only know objective truth through our physical senses but also acknowledges the innate subjectivity of the senses. Positivism seeks further freedom from subjectivity by grounding science in logic and math while still acknowledging that it is impossible to be entirely objective. Determinism, as far as I can tell, is the most radical form of the scientific worldview. It frees science from subjectivity altogether, positing that there is no free will and that all events can be determined by objective material causes.
The Religious Worldview: Apprehension Through Revelation
Religion and science both share an objective view of the world. Scientists may claim that religious belief is not objective because the revelations of prophets, mystics, and others are not empirically verifiable. But this doesn’t stop believers from taking revelation as objective truth about the world around them. And even if they don’t take everything in the Bible literally, believers retain an objective account of their place within the larger universe. Like science, religion posits a rational order to things, what is sometimes called “a great chain of being.” But unlike the natural order revealed by science, religion demands that believers orient themselves towards the ultimate good at the top of the chain, which they call “worshiping God.”
In the religious worldview “everything happens for a reason.” Unlike science, Christianity retains the remnants of its ancient Aristotelian teleology (the word telos in Greek means “purpose”). This provides believers with a profound feeling of meaningfulness in life. This view also comes with some downsides. In its more extreme forms religion fosters conspiratorial thinking: seeing patterns in the world as the work of hidden agents. However in its more mild forms religion simply encourages a humble belief in the meaningfulness of life without projecting explanations on everything. Life can be mysterious and chaotic but religion offers faith in an order beyond human understanding.
In the religion quadrant I’ve listed four sub-categories ranging from centrist to extreme: the believer (the humble worshiper whose religion gives meaning and responsibility their life), the traditionalist (who looks to the religious past for meaning in the present), the fundamentalist (who rejects everything that doesn’t jive with their particular interpretation of scripture), and the conspiracy theorist (who perceives patterns in the world and interprets them as designed by good and evil agents).
The Individualist Worldview: Apprehension Through Self-Expression
In the lower two quadrants we have the subjective views of Individualists and Romantics. In these worldviews truth is found within the self, not outside the self. “You are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world” proclaims Emilie Autumn. The philosophical underpinnings of subjectivity were laid by Emmanuel Kant who claimed that we can never know “the thing in itself.” This doesn’t mean that a subjective worldview necessarily lacks meaning. Rather, meaning in life is accessed internally, not externally.
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A subjective worldview is also expressive. Embedded in the word express is the verb “to press.” Individualists and Romantics press themselves onto the formless chaos of the world and create new realities. Artists like Beethoven and Picasso are celebrated. Great capitalists like Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie are its heroes (or its villains, depending on the ideology). And ideologies emerge to shape the world into new forms: democratic liberalism, communism, fascism, or social justice.
Individualists and Romantics differ in the amount of meaningfulness they perceive in the world around them. Individualists often interpret the world fatalistically: “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.” Meaning is generated through the individualist’s personal manifestation within it. I’ve listed four sub-categories ranging from centrist to extreme: the Epicurean, the capitalist, the hedonist, and the narcissist. The narcissist is the most extreme type of individualist and sees personal self expression as the only meaningful thing that exists. The hedonist is the second most extreme type, one that rejects any sense of responsibility to the outside world, focusing only on the pursuit of pleasure. Capitalists who throw themselves out onto the subjective whims of the world and scramble among themselves for dominance within it. The Epicurean focuses on a more balanced approach to personal fulfillment.
The Romantic Worldview: Apprehension Through Imagination
Romantics, like religious believers, have a strong sense of meaningfulness in their lives. Unlike religious believers however, romantics access that meaning subjectively from the inside, not objectively from the outside. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. This is all the world knows or needs to know.” So said the poet John Keats at the beginning of a period called “the Romantic Era.” With the word “beauty,” Keats meant not only the beauty we perceive in objects, but beautiful ideas, including beautiful political ideas. In Romantic period, millions marched behind ideological banners they found beautiful and which they believed could transform a chaotic and unjust world into a perfect utopia. And when these ideals fail to account for objective realities on the ground, utopias quickly become dystopias.
In the Romantic quadrant I’ve listed four sub-categories ranging from centrist to extreme: the artist, the ideologue, the revolutionary, and the nihilist. The artist perceives reality through the imagination. The ideologue goes further, imagining how one might create not just a beautiful painting, but a beautiful world. The revolutionary puts these ideas into action. And the nihilist destroys that world when the utopia fails. It’s perhaps not fair to Romantics to say this, but Hitler is a perfect example of the Romantic type. He started out as a painter. Then he became an ideologue, writing Mein Kampf, (My Struggle). As a revolutionary, he dismantled the world around him and began rebuilding it in the image of his new ideology. When these dreams clashed with reality, he became nihilistic, preferring to let Germany be destroyed rather than have it repossessed by the objective realities he had tried so hard to ignore. (While it might seem wrong to categorize nihilism as “meaningful,” one must remember that from the perspective of the nihilist, their destructive acts are deeply meaningful, a heroic attempt to unmask the hypocrisies of the world or to give civilization a well-deserved apocalypse.)
Worldview Alliances and Antagonisms
There is an interesting set of crisscrossing alliances in the four quadrants. Romantic ideologues like today’s environmentalists frequently justify their views in scientific terms and scientific organizations frequently find themselves advancing idealistic political agendas. Along the opposite diagonal, religion has a close relationship with individualist capitalism. Religious believers in the US voted for capitalist Donald Trump in high percentages. At the same time, there are parallel sets of antagonisms between the worldviews. Science finds itself at odds with religion and there is hostility between romantic ideologues and capitalist individualists often manifested as class warfare. The romantic ideologue’s subjective morals clash with the religious believer’s objective morals.
Why this odd set of alliances and antagonisms? Perhaps extremists in each of the quadrants feel an innate instability in their extremism. On some level we all recognize that the world is neither exclusively subjective or objective but rather a mixture of both. Perhaps we seek to alleviate the imbalance of our worldviews with appeals to our opposite extremes. For example, romantic communists interpret their subjective ideologies as objective certainties, appealing to a special science of class struggle. Communism’s adoption of this scientific perspective makes it feel like a comprehensive worldview embracing both ideals and objective realities. But what is missing from communism are insights from the other two worldviews: religion and individualism. Communism’s inability to account for these perspectives leads to its downfall. In a similar way individualistic capitalism has its blind spots. Capitalists take an indulgent approach to religion. Religion returns the favor by providing capitalism with moral justifications. However, capitalists often fail to recognize that the communal ideals of romantics are an inescapable dimension of human nature. 19th century capitalism in particular suffered from the constant threat of romantic revolt. The triumph of capitalism today is not due to the virtues of capitalism per se, but to its successful accommodation of ideological socialism. A purely libertarian capitalism would likely have been overrun by revolutions.
An Optimal Worldview
In my worldview map I’ve drawn a circle around the more moderate views within the four quadrants: humanists, believers, epicureans, and artists. This inner circle constitutes what could be a more optimal worldview, one that accounts for the perspectives of all four quadrants. I imagine a kind of modern Renaissance man (or woman) who is simultaneously a religious humanist and an artistic individualist. An optimal worldview assumes that the human experience is neither entirely subjective or objective but rather something in between. (Transjective is the word John Vervaeke uses to explore this middle ground.) This view also assumes that some things in life are meaningful, but not everything. John Vervaeke uses the phrase “relevance realization” to describe the cognitive recognition that something is personally meaningful.
Respectful Opposition Between Worldviews
Perhaps my attempt to create an “optimal” worldview is hopelessly unrealistic. It could be that diverse perspectives are distributed throughout humanity and we can only access a more complete picture by engaging with each other. Cognitive scientists have a theory called “opponent processing” which describes the way different parts of the brain oppose each in the decision making process. John Vervaeke believes opponent processing can also be applied to the relationship between individuals and groups. Rather than singing Kumbaya in a single harmonious worldview, perhaps what is needed is a respectful opposition between worldviews. We needn’t abandon our perspectives. And as long as none of the worldviews are playing zero sum games with the others, more optimal paths forward may emerge.
