On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. This article is about the totality of entities. In its most general sense, the term “world” refers to the world best refrigerator brand 2020 of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is.

The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique while others talk of a “plurality of worlds”. In various contexts, the term “world” takes a more restricted meaning associated, for example, with the Earth and all life on it, with humanity as a whole or with an international or intercontinental scope. Different fields often work with quite different conceptions of the essential features associated with the term “world”. Some conceptions see the world as unique: there can be no more than one world. Others talk of a “plurality of worlds”.

Monism is a thesis about oneness: that only one thing exists in a certain sense. The denial of monism is pluralism, the thesis that, in a certain sense, more than one thing exists. Scientific cosmology can be defined as the science of the universe as a whole. In it, the terms “universe” and “cosmos” are usually used as synonyms for the term “world”. The world-concept plays an important role in many modern theories of modality, usually in the form of possible worlds. A possible world is a complete and consistent way how things could have been.

Possible worlds are often conceived as abstract objects, for example, in terms of non-obtaining states of affairs or as maximally consistent sets of propositions. On such a view, they can even be seen as belonging to the actual world. It has been suggested that, besides possible worlds, there are also impossible worlds. Possible worlds are ways things could have been, so impossible worlds are ways things could not have been.

Such worlds involve a contradiction, like a world in which Hillary Clinton both won and lost the 2016 US election. Within phenomenology, worlds are defined in terms of horizons of experiences. In philosophy of mind, the term “world” is commonly used in contrast to the term “mind” as that which is represented by the mind. This is sometimes expressed by stating that there is a gap between mind and world and that this gap needs to be overcome for representation to be successful. Different theological positions hold different conceptions of the world based on its relation to God.

Classical theism states that God is wholly distinct from the world. But the world depends for its existence on God, both because God created the world and because He maintains or conserves it. In philosophy, the term world has several possible meanings. In some contexts, it refers to everything that makes up reality or the physical universe. Plato is well known for his theory of forms, which posits the existence of two different worlds: the sensible world and the intelligible world. The sensible world is the world we live in, filled with changing physical things we can see, touch and interact with.

History is what judges men, their actions and their opinions. The World as Will and Representation is the central work of Arthur Schopenhauer. Two definitions that were both put forward in the 1920s, however, suggest the range of available opinion. The world is everything that is the case,” wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein in his influential Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, first published in 1921. Martin Heidegger, meanwhile, argued that “the surrounding world is different for each of us, and notwithstanding that we move about in a common world”.