What is your World View?

[dougo]

Quiz from twistjusty:

You scored as Materialist. Materialism stresses the essence of fundamental particles. Everything that exists is purely physical matter and there is no special force that holds life together. You believe that anything can be explained by breaking it up into its pieces. i.e. the big picture can be understood by its smaller elements. </td> Modernist 94% Materialist 94% Existentialist 69% Idealist 56% Postmodernist 44% Fundamentalist 38% Cultural Creative 31% Romanticist 25% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

I'm not sure I fully agree with this description, though: most things are understandable by breaking them into smaller parts, but things like chaos theory and emergence require a sort of holistic understanding. But in some other sense, that's still breaking into smaller parts. I read a quote somewhere recently saying something like "Thinking is the act of forgetting a difference", i.e. abstracting and generalizing. Which is either profound or trivial, I can't decide...

Interestingly, I got a tiebreaker question, asking me to choose which is more true:

1. All that exists is matter and energy.
2. Science can solve all problems and answer all questions, eventually.

I agree with the intent of the second statement, but Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems make me hesitant to say that it's completely true. But I'm pretty sure about the first, so I picked that. Otherwise I'd be a Modernist:

Modernism represents the thought that science and reason are all we need to carry on. Religion is unnecessary and any sort of spirituality halts progress. You believe everything has a rational explanation. 50% of Americans share your world-view.

50% seems really high, though. Wonder where/when that number comes from.

Comments

[mshonle.livejournal.com]

I think even in light of diagonalization the absolute statement of 2 should be rejected.

I came out as an Existentialist, with the tie-breaker otherwise leading me to be a Materialist.

[prusik.livejournal.com]

I ended up as a "Cultural Creative" which makes me think that I answered certain specific questions in ways which swamped out the effects of everything else that I answered. OTOH, the description reads to me like "agnostic who refuses to commit" which I guess isn't a bad description of my world view.

However, I suspect that I'd read whatever description that popped up as being not a bad description of my world view.

BTW, given the number of Americans who think Creationism is credible, I highly doubt 50% of Americans are rationalists.