ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the concept of world view as the configuration of meaning underlying a historical social order. Individual existence derives its meaning from a transcendent world view. It contains socially relevant categories of time, space, causality, and purpose as well as more specific interpretive schemes. Due to its orienting function for the individual, a world view is an elementary form of religion. The chapter then sketches the social forms of this religion in their historical succession and their embeddedness in particular social structures. In relatively simple societies with a low degree of institutional differentiation, religion lacks institutionalization and is spread across society in total. More complex societies relay religious functions to an organized priesthood or an otherwise institutionally autonomous religion.
