ABSTRACT
Michael Oakeshott's conception of human life is one of self-conscious agents choosing their actions against a background of culturally mediated forms and practices. But over and above criticising Bernard Williams' restrictive view of the humanities as important because of their role in social criticism, it is important to compare the types of understanding of ourselves that might be given to us in the social sciences from that which the arts can give us. Many workers in the social sciences do attempt analysis and evocation of the experience of agents in a particular culture or situation. The contrast between the scientific and artistic approaches to experience was the real substance of the much misunderstood debate between Snow and Leavis on the 'two' cultures. One of Leavis's main points was that Snow betrayed insensitivity to the nature of the human world when he spoke of science and technology as constituting a culture.
