Introduction

An author can try to show how a conviction formed by presenting the questions that guided it, the distinctions that mattered, the examples that changed something, and the steps by which one view gave way to another.

The reader may then be able to walk that path.

Where that is not enough, an author can try to make a phenomenon visible or tangible enough to be examined in another way.

But texts cannot guarantee that convictions will form in the same way in every reader.

Texts contribute to that formation by clarifying something, raising a question, making a comparison, or opening another possibility.

But they do not command the result.

More generally, people can ask questions, seek other possibilities, direct attention, use procedures, return to problems, or prepare before a situation occurs.

Such interventions can alter the conditions under which conviction forms without determining what will become convincing.

Convictions form, and questions can become pressing without our choosing either.

What, in all this, is actually our doing?