In this very deliberately crafted memoir, Dr. Bill Torbert goes directly into his teaching roots. Even as he speaks of his own experiences, he peppers in the issues of the day, and how society can indeed awaken to the deeper meaning of itself, one individual at a time. Within the pages of Numbskull in the Theatre of Inquiry: Transforming Self, Friends, Organizations, and Social Science the audience will find exactly that.

An anti-heroic work of monumental magnitude, Numbskull recounts Dr. Tobert’s dramatic early life in Europe and the US, He recounts for us how he gradually learned, from the experiences of his own leadership efforts, a theory of learning from experience. From his experiences, he also learned a theory of organizational transformation, culminating in ‘liberating disciplines’ that help others learn to transform from their own experiences.

Dr. Tolbert formulated a developmental theory of social science that culminates in the paradigm of Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry (CDAI) that interweaves first-, second-, and third-person research and practice to offer more depth and perspective.