Perceptual Control Theory - History

History

The unaffiliated scientist William T. Powers recognized that to be purposeful implies control, and that the concepts and methods of engineered control systems could be applied to biological control systems. Powers recognized further that in any control system the variable that is controlled is not the output of the system (the behavioral actions), but its input, that is, a sensed and transformed function of some state of the environment that could be affected by the control system's output. Because some of these sensed and transformed inputs appear as consciously perceived aspects of the environment, Powers labelled the controlled variable "perception". The theory came to be known as "Perceptual Control Theory" or PCT rather than "Control Theory Applied to Psychology" because control theorists often assert or assume that it is the system's output that is controlled. In PCT it is the internal representation of the state of some variable in the environment—a "perception" in everyday language—that is controlled. The basic principles of PCT were first published by Powers, Clark, and MacFarland as a "general feedback theory of behavior" in 1960, with credits to cybernetic authors Wiener and Ashby, and has been systematically developed since then in the research community that has gathered around it. Initially, it received little general recognition, but is now better known.