Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept

by James W. Sire

Overview

What is a worldview? What lies behind your thoughts about almost everything? For more than thirty years, James W. Sire has grappled with this issue. In his widely used textbook The Universe Next Door, first published in 1976, Sire offered a succinct definition of a worldview and catalogued in summary fashion seven basic worldview alternatives. Students, critics, new literature and continued reflection have led him to reexamine and refine his definition of a worldview. This second edition companion volume to The Universe Next Door is the fruit of that effort, offering readers his most mature thought on the concept of a worldview, addressing such questions as

• What is the history of the concept itself?
• What is the first question you should ask in formulating a worldview?
• How are worldviews formed existentially as well as intellectually?
• Is a worldview primarily an intellectual system, a way of life or a story?
• What are the public and private dimensions of a worldview?
• What role can worldview thinking play in assessing your own worldview and those of others, especially in light of the pluralism in today's world?

Naming the Elephant is an excellent resource for exploring more deeply how and why worldview thinking can aid you in navigating your pluralistic universe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780830840731
Publisher:	InterVarsity Press
Publication date:	01/05/2015
Edition description:	Second Edition, Revised, Second Edition
Pages:	201
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

James W. Sire (Ph.D., University of Missouri), formerly editor at InterVarsity Press, is a frequent guest lecturer at colleges and universities in the United States and Europe. He has written many books and Bible studies, including The Universe Next Door, Naming the Elephant, Habits of the Mind and Jesus the Reason.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface
1. Camel, Kangaroo and Elephant
2. Worldview Definitions: From Dilthey to Naugle
3. First Things First: Being or Knowing
4. Flesh and Bones: Theoretical and Pretheoretical
5. Rational System, Way of Life and Master Story
6. Worldviews: Public and Private
7. Worldview: A Refined Definition
8. Intelligent People Who Clash by Day: Worldviews as a Tool for Analysis
Index

Editorial Reviews

"I highly recommend this book to others who seek to think in worldview terms."

Cheryl Doss

"I highly recommend this book to others who seek to think in worldview terms."

--Cheryl Doss, Mission Studies, 2008

From the Publisher

Sire, who as an InterVarsity Press editor and author of The Universe Next Door helped introduce Christian college students to "worldview," revisits the subject with a more technical approach that sacrifices the essential simplicity of the earlier work. The title refers to the story of a father asked to explain what holds up the world. Eventually he chooses "the biggest animal he could think of and put a capital on it... `It's an Elephant... it's Elephant all the way down.' " Like the Elephant, a worldview is expected to answer big questions about "the basic makeup of our world," and is likely "brought to mind only when we are challenged by a foreigner from another ideological universe." Sire notes that such challenges are mounting in our increasingly pluralistic world, even though the basic menu of worldview options remains mostly unchanged from a generation ago, with the (grudgingly acknowledged) addition of postmodernism. In defining the concept of worldview, Sire goes beyond his earlier treatment of worldviews as "answers to a systematic set of questions" to consider other possibilities. A worldview can also take the form of a story, a way of life, a pre-theoretical intuition or a pattern of actions. Such alternatives promote a nuanced appreciation of worldviews, and of the serious difficulty in communicating across worldview frontiers. But for all these refinements, Sire's message remains basically the same: Christians tend to have Christian beliefs, and others tend not to. (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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