ABSTRACT
In a monograph published in 1915 titled (in translation) Preliminary Considerations for a Worldview, 1 the German philosopher and psychologist William Stern (1871–1938) wrote: 2
A facsimile of the world, an absolutely objective reflection of what is, in and of itself, is not possible for a mere mortal. There is no object absent a subject. [But at the same time], a worldview recognizes a positive reversal of this notion: There is no subject without an object. Because even if I cannot grasp the world in and of itself, I nevertheless grasp it as it is for me. Even if the human is no utterly neutral and smooth-surfaced mirror that faithfully reflects what is out there, but is instead a prism that refracts the world's rays of light into thousands of color gradations, it is nevertheless the light of the world that is thus refracted.
(Stern, 1915, p. 4, emphasis added)