A world view (or worldview) is a term calqued from the German word Weltanschauung ([ˈvɛlt.ʔanˌʃaʊ.ʊŋ] (help·info)) Welt is the German word for 'world,' and Anschauung is the German word for 'view' or 'outlook'. It implies a concept fundamental to German philosophy and epistemology and refers to a wide world perception. Additionally, it refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs 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. (Compare with ideology).

Origins of world views
A worldview describes a consistent (to a varying degree) and integral sense of existence and provides a framework for generating, sustaining, and applying knowledge.
The linguistic relativity hypothesis of Benjamin Lee Whorf describes how the syntactic-semantic structure of a language becomes an underlying structure for the Weltanschauung of a people through the organization of the causal perception of the world and the linguistic categorization of entities. As linguistic categorization emerges as a representation of worldview and causality, it further modifies social perception and thereby leads to a continual interaction between language and perception.
The theory, or rather hypothesis, was well received in the late 1940s, but declined in prominence after a decade. In the 1990s, new research gave further support for the linguistic relativity theory, in the works of Stephen Levinson and his team at the Max Planck institute for Psycholinguistics at Nijmegen, The Netherlands [1]. The theory has also gained attention through the work of Lera Boroditsky at Stanford University.

Weltanschauung and cognitive philosophy
As natural language becomes manifestations of world perception, the literature of a people with common Weltanschauung emerges as holistic representations of the wide world perception of the people. Thus the extent and commonality between world folk-epics becomes a manifestation of the commonality and extent of a worldview.
Epic poems are shared often by people across political borders and across generations. Examples of such epics include the Nibelungenlied of the Germanic-Scandinavian people, The Silappadhikaram of the South Indian people, The Gilgamesh of the Mesopotamian-Sumerian civilization and the people of the Fertile Crescent at large, The Arabian nights of the Arab world and the Sundiata epic of the Mandé people.
See also: list of world folk-epics

Worldview and folk-epics
The 'construction of integrating worldviews' begins from fragments of worldviews offered to us by the different scientific disciplines and the various systems of knowledge. It is contributed to by different perspectives that exist in the world's different cultures. This is the main topic of research at the Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies.
It should be noted that while Apostel and his followers clearly hold that individuals can construct worldviews, other writers regard worldviews as operating at a community level, and/or in an unconscious way. For instance, if one's worldview is fixed by one's language, as according to a strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, one would have to learn or invent a new language in order to construct a new worldview.
According to Apostel, a worldview should comprise seven elements:

An ontology, a descriptive model of the world
An explanation of the world
A futurology, answering the question "where are we heading?".
Values, answers to ethical questions: "What should we do?".
A praxeology, or methodology, or theory of action.: "How should we attain our goals?"
An epistemology, or theory of knowledge. "What is true and false?"
An etiology. A constructed world-view should contain an account of its own "building blocks", its origins and construction. Construction of worldviews

Impact of worldviews
The term denotes a comprehensive set of opinions, seen as an organic unity, about the world as the medium and exercise of human existence. Weltanschauung serves as a framework for generating various dimensions of human perception and experience like knowledge, politics, economics, religion, culture, science, and ethics. For example, worldview of causality as uni-directional, cyclic, or spiral generates a framework of the world that reflects these systems of causality. A uni-directional view of causality is present in some monotheistic views of the world with a beginning and an end and a single great force with a single end (e.g., Christianity and Islam), while a cyclic worldview of causality is present in religious tradition which is cyclic and seasonal and wherein events and experiences recur in systematic patterns (e.g., Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, and Hinduism).
These worldviews of causality not only underlie religious traditions but also other aspects of thought like the purpose of history, political and economic theories, and systems like democracy, authoritarianism, anarchism, capitalism, socialism, and communism.
The worldview of linear and non-linear causality generates various related/conflicting disciplines and approaches in scientific thinking. The Weltanschauung of the temporal contiguity of act and event leads to underlying diversifications like determinism vs. free will. A worldview of Freewill leads to disciplines that are governed by simple laws that remain constant and are static and empirical in scientific method, while a worldview of determinism generates disciplines that are governed with generative systems and rationalistic in scientific method.
Some forms of Philosophical naturalism and materialism reject the validity of entities inaccessible to natural science. They view the scientific method as the most reliable model for building and understanding of the world.

Other aspects
Various writers suggest that religious or philosophical belief-systems should be seen as worldviews rather than a set of individual hypotheses or theories. The Japanese Philosopher Nishida Kitaro wrote extensively on "the Religious Worldview" in exploring the philosophical significance of Eastern religions