ABSTRACT

Belief-systems or worldviews, whether they be religious or non-religious, collective or individual, official or informal, are hard to refute. They are also difficult to establish. One of the ways in which a worldview may change is by in-corporating new segments into its overall structure. The same sort of thing applies to philosophical ideas: a worldview hopes for consistency and may call on a metaphysical scheme such as that of Aristotle as reinterpreted by Saint Thomas Aquinas to give it coherent structure. It is indeed a paradox that the pursuit of openness should as it were force a liberal society upon us. A tolerant and open structure would be presupposed by open education and general voluntarism: but it would in no wise prevent people from espousing any religious or non-religious worldview. The epistemology of worldviews implies the necessity of pluralism.