The nineteenth century German philosophy Wilhelm Dilthey was the first person to develop a comprehensive theory of worldviews (German: Weltanschauung). The American Heritage dictionary defines a worldview as, "the overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world." Our worldviews consist of our most basic beliefs, including our ontology (what we consider real), our epistemology (what we consider to be the best way to obtain knowledge), and our ethics (what we consider good and bad).

Dilthey felt that all worldviews fell into three main categories, each of which was based on the dominance of one of our primary mental acts or "attitudes":