Noting the traditional focus of the humanities as the study of knowledge in relationship to Truth and God, Masson (English literature, Tyndale U. College, Toronto, Canada) offers an analysis based on his doctoral dissertation of how the Scientific Age eroded that view of wisdom. The author traces the development of modern hermeneutics in the Enlightenment ideas of Schleiermacher and Kant, and Romantic poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. He also parses Hannah Arendt's argument in (1998) that Cartesian ideas and scientific discoveries fostered a new analytic logic not rooted in biblical or classical accounts. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR