Worlds of a Worldview

Here is an approach how to think about individual, organizational and societal worldviews and how they change over time. A worldview can be defined by viewable and unviewable worlds. What a person, an organization or a society experiences throughout its existence shapes the ever changing boundary between those two dimensions. A viewable world is everything that can be either perceived or imagined on the basis of experiences. An unviewable world is everything a person, an organization or a society cannot view because no experiences have been made that would enable such a view. We can imagine that the planet could be quadratic, but only because we already experienced quadratic shapes somewhere else. Without this experience the imagination of quadratic planets would be unviewable for us. With every new experience worlds that were once unviewable become viewable. This process is often less a discovery and rather an invention of worlds. For everyone interested in changing its worldview, engaging with unviewable worlds is crucial. Unviewable worlds can be divided into unthinkable, unrecognizable and unreachable worlds. Unthinkable worlds are worlds we could principally think about but cannot because we have never experienced them and also cannot imagine them on the basis of other experiences. Before traveling to a certain location and without receiving any informational input about the location it is simply unthinkable how daily life in this location looks like. Even things we actually experience are often unthinkable for us because prior experiences such as social norms conditioned us to view only certain excerpts of that experience. Beyond unthinkable worlds are unrecognizable worlds. These worlds cannot get viewed because current sensory systems do not enable us to experience them. Without technical infrastructures to measure temperature rises, climate change as a planetary phenomena would be unrecognizable. Climate change became recognizable and therefore viewable through new sensory systems. Beyond unrecognizable worlds there might be worlds that remain unreachable for humans whatever new sensory systems they develop. How worldviews change is undesignable, though what a person, an organization or a society can do is to openly gather experiences out of which new views could emerge. Usually, worldviews develop relatively slowly and often towards preconfigured directions, but to stay actionable in a rapidly changing world we need to be able to systematically update our worldviews. Because it is impossible to act on things we cannot view.

Jan 16, 2026