Behavior: The Control of Perception

by William T. Powers

From English to Mandarin : Three distinguished Chinese scholars discovered Bill Powers' perceptual control theory . (PCT) on the internet, and presented a paper at the International Control Systems Group meeting in Los Angeles, 2003: Some Axiological Interpretations of PCT) (Zhang Hua Xia et al. Perceptual control theory, put forward by W. T. Powers, can be analyzed in terms of general control theory and systems theory, as well as in terms of the behavioral science of animals and humans. In recent years, PCT is widely applied in neuroclinical pathology, management, sociology and computer science. In particular, Powers himself applied the theory to study origins of life (The Origins of the first metasystem transitions, p. 125-138 in F. Heylighen, C. Joslyn & V. Turchin, eds. 1995, The Quantum of Evolution. Gordon and Breach Science New York.)(Zhang Hua Xia et al). With the help of the author, senior editor, Zhang Huaxia, Professor of the Department of Philosophy, Sun Yat Sen (Zhongshan) University, Guangzhou, China, translated the Control of Perception , Powers' seminal work on control theory.

The 2006 Annual Meeting of the Control Systems Group took place in July, 2006 in Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong Province in the People's Republic of China, hosted by the Control Systems Group, South China Normal University and The Chinese Research Council of Complexity and Philosophy of Systems Science. In 1973, Professor Thomas S. Kuhn, Professor of History of Science, Princeton University, noted author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , wrote (about the first edition of Powers manuscript is among the most exciting I have read in some time....I shall be watching with interest to what happens to research in the directions in which it points. In 2005, President Zan Zechian & Professor Fan Dongping, Professors, Philosophy, South China Normal University and Zhang Huaxia Powers' PCT is a further development of wiener s classical cybernetics and superior to it in the creation of the new concept about purpose the reference signal .... And in 2009, Professor Henry H. Yin, Psychology/Neuroscience, Duke University, North Carolina, USA Bill Powers is one of the clearest and most original thinkers in the history of psychology. For decades he has explored with persistence and ingenuity the profound implications of the simple idea that biological organisms are control systems. His background in engineering allowed him to avoid many of the traps that have victimized even the best psychologists of the past. I believe his contributions will stand the test of time.

220 pages, Paperback

Published July 30, 2004

About the author

William T. Powers (August 29, 1926 – May 24, 2013) was a medical physicist, science fiction author, and an independent scholar of experimental and theoretical psychology.

Powers developed the perceptual control theory (PCT) model of behavior as the control of perception. PCT demonstrates and explains how rather than controlling their behavioral outputs, living things vary their behavior as the means of controlling their sensory inputs (perceptions). Living control systems differ from those specified by Engineering control theory (a thermostat is a simple example), for which the reference value (setpoint) for control is specified outside the system by what is called the controller, whereas in living systems the reference variable for each feedback control loop in a control hierarchy is generated within the system, usually as a function of error output from a higher-level system or systems. Powers and his students and colleagues in diverse fields have developed many demonstrations of negative feedback control, and computer models or simulations that replicate observed and measured behavior of living systems (human and animal, individuals and groups of individuals) with a very high degree of fidelity (0.95 or better), and corresponding control structures have been demonstrated neurophysiologically.

Powers also designed the board game Trippples, produced by Aladdin Industries and granted US Patent 3,820,791 in 1974.