A world view, (or worldview) is a term calqued from the German word Weltanschauung (pronounced //) meaning a "look onto the world". It implies a concept fundamental to German philosophy and epistemology and refers to a wide world perception. It refers to the framework through which an individual interprets the world and interacts in it. The German word is also in wide use in English, as well as the "translated" form world outlook.

Weltanschauung and cognitive philosophy

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One of the most important concepts in cognitive philosophy and generative sciences is the German concept of ‘Weltanschauung’. This expression refers to the 'wide worldview' or 'wide world perception' of a people. The Weltanschauung of a people originates from the unique world experience of a people, which they experience over several millennia. The language of a people reflects the Weltanschauung of that people in the form of its syntactic structures and untranslatable connotations and its denotations.

A map of the world on the basis of Weltanschauung crosses political borders because Weltanschauung is the product of both political borders and common experiences of a people from a geographical region, environmental-climatic conditions, the economic resources available, socio-cultural systems and the linguistic family. The work of the population geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza aims to show the gene-linguistic co-evolution of people.

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