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Over the past few decades, nurse scholars have widely embraced the idea of worldviews and of worldviews serving as the bases of conceptions of nursing. Today, worldviews are so much taken for granted as the starting point of nursing inquiry that nurse scholars are continually seeking solutions to epistemological problems within the idea of worldviews. This article argues that, as long as we persist in doing so, the nursing discipline's aim to develop an organized body of nursing knowledge for nursing practice will remain unrealized. I propose that conceptions of nursing and of nursing inquiry be grounded in the philosophy of moderate realism, which eschews the idea of worldviews.
Keywords: worldview; nursing knowledge
The idea of worldviews has become firmly entrenched, almost sacred, within nursing and the human sciences. Over the past few decades, nurse scholars have widely embraced the idea of worldviews and of worldviews serving as the bases of conceptions of nursing. For example, Fawcett (1993) has organized the extant conceptions of nursing (variously called nursing theories, conceptual models of nursing, and conceptual nursing frameworks) under three worldviews that she has classified as the reaction, the reciprocal interaction, and the simultaneous action worldviews. Parse (1987) has arranged the conceptions under two worldviews that she has identified as the totality and simultaneity worldviews. Newman (1992) has proposed other terms for the worldviews evident in the nursing theory literature: particulate-deterministic, interactive-integrative, and unitary-transformative.
Discussion concerning the worldviews depicted in the nursing theory literature has ranged from the need for parsimony in the development of worldviews in nursing (Fawcett, 1993) to the need to base nursing thought and action on worldviews originating within the nursing discipline rather than those originating within other disciplines such as psychology and sociology (Cody, 1995). Of late, discussion has focused on whether or not the extant worldviews and of the conceptions of nursing based on them are spawning the kind of nursing knowledge needed for nursing practice. That discussion has recommended adoption of other worldviews deemed to be more satisfactory. For example, Reed (1995) has proposed that nursing adopt neomodernism and develop nursing metanarratives. On identifying the limitations of both positivism and constructionism,Wainwright (1997) has recommended that nursing adopt realism "as a radically different new paradigm" (p. 1262). Letourneau and...