Abstract

The relationship between science and faith is not a given, nor is it objectively defined, but rather depends on personal ways of approaching this relationship. Accordingly, it can be lived as a conflict, i.e. as agency striving to master independent and separate domains or as a process of dialogue or an integral relationship. In this chapter, we suggest that adopting one stance or the other depends on factors that go beyond the rational assessment that a person makes of science or faith. To explain the perspective that people adopt, cross-disciplinary theoretical insights relevant to human beings and their development are decisive. Based on previous research consolidating several theoretical proposals across a diverse disciplinary orientation, we suggest that there are two contrasting paradigms for conceiving of the self and human development, namely, the autonomous self and the inter-processual self. We purport here that, depending on which of these two corresponding backgrounds characterises the person, people will ‘see’ and live the relationship—dialogue between science and faith—differently.