Basic Knowledge
There are three ways the book distinctively advanced my theoretical knowledge of the rhetoric and philosophy of communication. Firstly, this manuscript has provided phenomena explanations and how they relate, which has given me appealing instances of the real world. The author explains how the past years range from civilization to modern society, which has helped me acquire adequate knowledge concerning the past and modern evolvements. Secondly, it has encouraged me to make more inquiries concerning what I do not understand. Randall’s arguments have helped me ask more concerning transitions that happened in the past and how they happened, including how people communicated to facilitate the changes.
Thirdly, through the chapters depicted by the writer, I can sharpen my communication aspects for easier and clearer comprehension of the process. For instance, chapter one, “The Coming of Age of the Western peoples,” enabled me to learn more about human history achievements, the selling of western civilization, and the twelfth renaissance (Randall 4). The novelist majorly focuses on historical setting ideas, including how thought modes react, grow, emerge, and influence each other, uniting religion through the synthesis of the western thought currents.
Metaphor and Argument
There are five central questions of scholarly inquiry guiding this book. These questions include, “what is the author’s perspective? Why did the author write the book? When was the book written, where was it written? and if the source of the book is reliable.” These questions enable readers and leaders to know the author’s intentions in writing the book, the reasons he had in writing the book, the time he wrote the book, and where he used to write the book. Randall uses historical events besides relates them among readers (Randall 4). Hence, readers get the author’s overview in differentiating earlier occurrences and their impacts.
The dominant themes Randall uses in his book include religion and revolution. In the religion theme, the author explores the world as a salvation place, enjoyment of everlasting life, God’s city, and religious reactions from the medieval church. In the revolution theme, Randall explores past actions and how they relate to current events, including how man and leadership have evolved. These themes relate to the author’s arguments, including where he argues that Jesus rose from the dead and is sitting at the right hand of God on the throne. The author also argues it is via the mind human beings attach themselves to predecessors than through corporal persistence (Randall 5). According to my philosophical assumptions, the author believes that the past has influenced current events.
Relevance
This book involves different brain segments by enabling readers and learners to exercise their analytical and comprehension abilities, which are important in the marketplace and communication classroom. It fires the imagination of readers and stimulates their memories, enabling them to recognize the past events, which stabilizes their anxieties. In addition, in the classroom and marketplace setting, the playwright enhances the writing flows and styles of the readers by enabling them to acknowledge the dramatist’s writing skills and apply them. Learners and other readers get to learn new perspectives and words by helping them strengthen their sentence structures and language, helping them develop a better language command which is critical towards being a good speaker. I can apply the history knowledge I have learned from the book by grasping the circumstance nuances, analyzing them, and communicating them to my classmates, which will help me communicate effectively.
Work Cited
Randall, John Herman. The Making of The Modern Mind: A Survey of The Intellectual Background of The Present Age. Columbia University Press, 1976.