What is the nature of the world?
Before explicitly asking What is the nature of the world?—implying a single domain in which any and all experience occurs—we're always already tactily concerned with the many smaller worlds we occupy. We're in constant negotiation with the question What is the nature of my world? We're always navigating various significant, relational contexts (worlds) that concern us, and we're always negotiating a deeper understanding of those contexts. If you're a lawyer and mother of young children, for example, your life combines the worlds of practicing law and motherhood. Yet these worlds are necessarily connected to wider worlds; you'll be practicing a particular type of law, and you'll be raising very particular persons who will themselves need to learn how to navigate the wider world for themselves. Typically the widest social world that affects our day-to-day lives is our cultural world. Being familiar with the nature of one's culture (with its history) will help one navigate all those more personal worlds occurring within its horizon. Yet to the extent that we care about participating in the guidance of our culture, we are receptive to what's yet beyond its horizon. And, again, often times looking beyond the immediate gives us a bigger-picture understanding of what we care about most. The question What is the nature of the world? just takes this trend to its logical conclusion, helping us with a "biggest picture" perspective on the broadest-most significant, relational context with which we're involved.
