International Relations. A self-Study Guide to Theory

Self-study (1) 
In case you feel the need to refresh your knowledge about the historical 
processes of state formation and inter-state theory, it is recommended that 
you now take some time to go back to the summary at the end of Unit 1, 
Step 1.1. before you start reading about world views.
Step 1: World views 
What is a world view? This question is admittedly a difficult one, as we are 
talking about a term that is used in many ways – usually as related to the dif-
ferent “world views” of religious systems or ideologies. For example, there is 
a philosophical core of Buddhism made of assumptions from which Buddhist 
thought and practice are logically derived. The same can be said about Islam-
ic philosophy and other religious systems of knowledge. At a first glance, to 
apply the term “world view” to ideas of science could be confusing, as we 
usually don’t assume that science depends on a “view” or perspective. Ra-
ther, we tend to see science as relating to a system that produces “objective” 
knowledge that does not depend on a view or specific perspective of the 
world. Let me therefore introduce the idea of world views as it will be used in 
this chapter. I will do so by way of an example that will be familiar to you 
and for which the notion of “world view” is a widely used and accepted term: 
the existence of the geocentric (Ptolemaic) world view as developed in Greek 
antiquity was universally accepted until it was replaced by the heliocentric 
(Copernican) world view in the 16
th
century. In case you need to refresh your 
knowledge of geocentrism and heliocentrism, please take some time and do 
your own research on the terms.
To give a brief summary here, the geocentric world view was developed 
in Greek antiquity and is basically associated with the work of Ptolemy. Ptol-
emy was a mathematician, astronomer and geographer who likely lived 
around 90 AD to 168 AD. Ptolemy presented a geometrical model for calcu-
lating celestial motions based on astronomical observation and for the pur-
pose of calculating astronomical phenomena like the future and past positions 
of planets. The model was a geo-centric one, meaning that Earth occupied the 
center of the universe, with the sun, the moon and the planets moving around 

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the world on geometric curves. The geocentric model – which was also used 
by Aristotle – served as the universally accepted model for more than 1400 
years. The work of Ptolemy remained the authoritative text on astronomy 
throughout the Middle Ages. The geocentric world view lasted until the end 
of the Middle Ages in the 16
th
century. It was accepted to be “scientifically 
true” until it was “replaced” by the heliocentric world view.
The heliocentric world view is mainly associated with the works of Nico-
laus Copernicus (1473-1543) and is therefore often called the Copernican 
world view. With his major work De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium in 
1543, Copernicus formulated a new world view of the universe. In his model, 
the sun (not the earth) occupies the center of the universe, with the earth and 
the planets moving around the sun and the earth rotating on its own axis. He 
was inspired by the work of the ancient Greek Aristarchos of Samos, the first 
person reported to have promoted such a heliocentric model of the solar sys-
tem. Aristarchos created his model sometime around the 3
rd
century, but gained 
little acceptance for his work at that time. With his own heliocentric model, 
Copernicus was able to solve the inconsistencies of the geocentric Ptolemaic 
model by introducing new hypotheses. Copernicus’s model was mainly used 
for the mathematical calculus of astronomical phenomena until around 1610, 
when Galileo “proved” the model’s physical reality based on observations 
made with his famous telescope. The works of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), a 
philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, optician and theologist, further con-
solidated the heliocentric world view. Kepler formulated the exact mathemati-
cal model for heliocentrism, known as Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.
The works of Isaac Newton, particularly Newton’s law of gravity (1687), 
finally proved the heliocentric world view to be correct in its physicalist ex-
planation. Just to give you an idea of the time span involved in the transition 
process, Newton came up with the law of gravity more than 240 years after 
the publication of Copernicus’s major work. After Newton, the heliocentric 
world view gave rise to the dominance of what is called Cartesian-