The Meaning of Control: Making Sense of Behaviour

Making Sense of Behavior, The Meaning of Control by William T. Powers is a profound and sometimes funny introduction to control theory as applied to the behavior of living things.

Written for the common reader, MSOB demonstrates how "living control systems" really behave and interact. Deliberately simple examples peel back the layers of Powers' Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) to reveal its universal truths.

PCT is taught in the Life Science disciplines in a growing number of universities worldwide. Practical PCT applications continue to multiply: the study of infants (Netherlands); the turnaround of troubled schools (USA, Australia), Leadership Training (USA, Canada).

Mr. Powers' interest in control theory began when he was a junior medical physicist at the Argonne Cancer Research Hospital in Chicago during the early 1950s. Since then he has carried on dual careers; an official one as a designer of electronic systems for science, medicine, and commerce, and an unofficial one as an explorer of the organization of living systems.

Now retired with his wife Mary in Durango, Colorado, he continues his work on living systems through a busy discussion group on the internet, through designing computer models of living control systems, and through meetings and conferences on his favorite subject.

He has published numerous articles in scientific and technical journals as well as authoring four books currently in print. With Richard J. Robertson, Professor of Psychology, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, an "early adopter" of PCT, he co-edited the first introductory college text* on Perceptual Control Theory, which is being adopted by increasing number of universities in the USA and abroad.