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Numbskull in the Theatre of Inquiry. Bill Torbert’s new book.

Numbskull in the Theatre of Inquiry: Transforming Self, Friends, Organizations, and Social Science by William R. Torbert    (Waterside Productions, Cardiff CA, 2021) is now available at Amazon.

Numbskull is an anti-heroic memoir of Torbert’s life of discovering and enacting a theory and practice of leadership development, organization development, and scientific development. This highly readable book illustrates a new kind of social action and social science where the researchers include themselves in the study, and explore to what degree all the different participants are or are not exercising timely and mutually-transforming action. Integrating personal spiritual inquiry, interpersonal developmental friendships, and transformational leadership roles, with award-winning teaching and research, Torbert now shows us from the inside out what living inquiry feels like.

The book includes chapter endnotes written by members of Torbert’s action inquiry community, an autobiographical postscript written by a millennial Middle Eastern woman, and appendixes that display the full range of his theorizing. 

Reviewed by Jesse McKay:

“This book pretends to be about one man’s life. Don’t be fooled! It is a book about all of us. It is a book about the future. Not the future as it definitely will be – but certainly a future that is possible, and that I, for one, hope for.

Amongst the many narratives woven together through its pages, this book beckons us – individually, and as a civilization and a species – to take the next step in the philosophy and practice of science.

Modern science spent its early years in a dangerous world dominated by religion. Because its personality was formed in reaction to religion, rather than in an independent, non-reactive, healthy and balanced way, the practice of modern science is less than its full healthy self. This is most easily seen in its dogmatic adherence to materialistic worldviews and methodologies – which in retrospect can be seen as an understandable overcorrection. Perhaps this overcorrection was necessary for a time – but at this point in the history of the philosophy of science it is time to drop the narrow mindedness built into its core, and help science open to its full potential.

Between the entertaining lines of the story of his life, Torbert invites us to join him and help mainstream science do just that. With examples across a wide range of contexts he helps us see how to expand the practice of science beyond ivory towers and corporate R&D departments, into our own personal pursuit of truth, beauty and goodness in our careers, our relationships, and our everyday lives in general.

There are many other threads of wisdom woven through this book, but at least for me, the most exciting and promising is Torbert’s vision and example of bringing more intelligence and greater sophistication to our practice of epistemology (discerning wisdom from ungrounded opinion) in our daily lives.

Over this last year we’ve seen an explosion of extremely sloppy epistemologies: an increasing disregard for actual evidence and due process in forming beliefs. We are faced with a toxic mixture of (A) a generally disembodied society, (B) widespread anxiety unconsciously motivating many to further disassociate, and (C) continually improving technologies such as the Internet which increasingly enable escape into ungrounded fantasies.

Against this societal backdrop this book – and the wisdom it offers around updating and expanding science to better serve us in our pursuit of truth, loving relationships and the good life – comes at exactly the right time.”

Find more reviews and get a copy. Numbskull is available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Numbskull-Theatre-Inquiry-Transforming-Organizations-ebook/dp/B08Y9BDZ63