Introduction

The metaphor of ‘turning the world upside down’ is deployed in this chapter to examine differences between world-views and their implications for research in the social sciences and practice in the caring professions. The first section sketches out the contours of four world-views – that is, secular, scientific, spiritual and religious – with reference to their philosophical premises. It will be shown that the scientific world-view often inverts the secular world-view insofar as scientists uncover deeper truths and realities of human beings and planet earth, while spiritual and religious world-views involve an inversion of both secular and scientific world-views insofar as they invoke meta-physical truths and realities beyond human beings and planet earth.

The rest of the chapter considers how the contemporary co-existence of world-views generates dilemmas for researchers and practitioners. The social sciences were incubated within the womb of a secular and scientific world that divested the meta-physical realm of any reality, but they are now inhabiting multicultural societies in an era of globalisation, where spiritual and religious world-views jostle alongside secular and scientific ones. Caring professionals have been schooled in the sciences and regulated by a secular state, but they have often been required to occupy the vacuum left by the demise of spiritual professionals when dealing with death, disability, depression and domestic violence, and they are now being exhorted to develop ‘cross-cultural competences’ in dealing with citizens who harbour diverse world-views.

The metaphor of ‘journeying’ is invoked to suggest fruitful ways forward. On the one hand, there is a journeying between world-views that can be found among some scholars. When they are able to sojourn in other life worlds as well they can acquire an insider appreciation of other world-views and open up a dialogue between world-views. On the other hand, there is a journeying deeper into one's own faith that can be found among some practitioners. When they are able to share the inner workings of faith-based practices in public forums, the differences made by spiritual and religious world-views can be appreciated by secular and scientific audiences. If both kinds of journeying are quite rare, it is because they require extraordinary care, courage and conviction.

World-views

Secular world-views

The secular world-view revolves around the facticities of everyday life on earth. The term ‘secular’ actually derives from the Middle Ages when everyone was socialised into a religious world-view (Christianity in Europe).