Final answer:
A worldview is an overarching belief system that influences how individuals or groups perceive the world and interact within it. This is foundational in various academic fields, such as the social sciences, where shifts in worldview result in new paradigms for understanding human behavior and societal structure.
Step-by-step explanation:
A worldview or paradigm represents a comprehensive belief system, ideology, or framework that an individual or group uses to interpret the world and their place within it. One primary theory defining a worldview is realism, which relates to the notion of states understanding the world based on power and security considerations. On the other hand, liberal and social worldviews focus on cooperation and the role of international institutions.
Philosopher Thomas Kuhn introduced the concept that paradigms define scientific disciplines and can shift when existing models fail to explain new phenomena, suggesting that knowledge and understanding are not static but evolve with new discoveries and intellectual developments.
Constructivism goes even further, proposing that both the understanding and the operation of the world are dynamic, changing over time as the perceptions and actions of individuals and groups reshape norms and influence the formation of a new global consensus.