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 the study of infants (Netherlands); the turnaround of troubled schools (USA, Australia), Leadership Training (USA, Canada).
From the author:
"This is a book about human nature, as we try to guess about it by watching human behavior. It's about a particular theory that seems to fit a great deal of what we see people doing and a great deal of our own private experience. A lot of people think that this is a pretty good theory. But my object in this book is not to persuade you that the theory is right, either by itself or by comparison with other theories. My main objective is to tell you what the theory is and why it has been constructed as it is. I will tell you of the observations that I have thought needed an explanation, and of how this theory appears to explain them. You can decide for yourself whether the theory and the observations go together, and are important."