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Quick guide to PCT

Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) has been around for over 50 years, leaving a trail of papers, books, websites, posts, conversations, videos all over the web. This is a quick guide to get started with the most basic materials: introductory texts, books, demonstrations, papers, websites and finding others interested in PCT. Welcome! [...]
PCT in 11 steps - introduction by Bill Powers

Control is a process of acting on the world we perceive to make it the way we want it to be, and to keep it that way. Examples of control: standing upright; walking; steering a car; scrambling eggs; scratching an itch; knitting socks; singing a tune. Extruding a pseudopod to absorb a nanospeck of food (all organisms control, not only human beings). The smallest organisms control by biochemical means, bigger ones by means of a nervous system. [...]
A simple introduction to PCT

A simple start… PCT stands for Perceptual Control Theory. Big words, eh? The ‘big idea’ behind PCT is simple but don’t be surprised if it takes a while to get your head around. This is it…. ‘Behaviour is the control of perception’ That’s it. Or more simply, we do things to get what we want – now that sounds too simple! Let’s take it a step at a time… [...]
Once around the loop

Elements of the control loop have been labeled slightly different by different people at different times and for different purposes, whether for a very plain explanation or for more mathematical treatment of the physical functions. Dag Forssell describes the elements of the control loop step by step, as an introduction to the basics of PCT. [...]

Economics & Marketing

To manage a successful business, you need to know what people want, how your business is perceived, and how to deal with people. It’s ripe for a PCT approach! […]

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Environmental Stability

January 30, 2022

A comprehensive introduction to PCT and its implications for the social and physical environment, on a global scale, are described in an online article by Kent McClelland. There are also a number of online articles that relate […]

Education

January 30, 2022

Education is about more than teaching. Within education we need to know how to motivate students, how can we maximise the degree to which people learn, and often, how do we manage students or pupils when they don’t want to learn, or they disrupt others? […]

Law

January 30, 2022

At present, the application of PCT to Law is at its early stages. Hugh Gibbons is one exception. He has co-authored a biological model of human rights based around the tenets of PCT and he also illustrates a case using PCT in this book, “The Death of Jeffrey Stapleton”, published online. […]

Politics and Philosophy – a PCT introduction

January 30, 2022

PCT takes a strongly scientific approach to human nature. It proposes that people and other living systems are purposeful – and that the systems that are responsible for purposeful action are explainable in mechanistic terms. […]

Robotics & Artificial Intelligence

January 30, 2022

PCT is emerging as a force in robotics. PCT lends itself well to the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics because it provides an exact mathematical framework to model psychological processes. […]

Psychology

January 30, 2022

In explaining how living things control their perception, PCT is clearly highly relevant to psychology. Contemporary articles are making the case to the wider establishment that closed-loop, circular causality is much closer to how living systems actually function than the approach researchers still use. […]

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Method of Levels

January 30, 2022

Method of Levels introductory text to follow

Biology and Neuroscience

Bill Powers developed PCT with biology in mind. We can split the relevance of PCT into two parts – function and structure. […]

Living Control Systems II

About Bill Powers Contents Page Foreword In 1979, Bill Powers wrote a prophecy: “A scientific revolution is just around the corner, and anyone with a personal computer can participate in it…. [T]he particular subject matter […]

The Method of Levels— How to do Psychotherapy Without Getting in the Way

Timothy A. Carey “I’ve just finished the Method of Levels, and I’m astonished, delighted, and inspired. I was a psychotherapist for many years, using a variety of approaches (predominantly Gestalt Therapy, several versions of family […]

Ways of Learning and Knowing: The Epistemology of Education

Hugh G. Petrie “For most of his career, Hugh was way ahead of his time. His papers in this volume still are. The role of the evolutionary process of blind variation and selective retention in […]

The Dilemma of Enquiry and Learning

Hugh G. Petrie “I think that this book will be ‘compulsory reading’ in graduate schools of education around the country, and that it will arouse a vigorous and healthy controversy by shaking people out of […]

Patient-Perspective Care: A New Paradigm for Health Systems and Services

December 11, 2022

Timothy A. Carey Routledge; 1st edition (December 1, 2017) Book description Inappropriate health care is an escalating and expensive problem. It affects high income, middle income, and low income countries and wastes billions of dollars […]

Understanding and Changing the Things You Do

“Wow. I am impressed with this book! It is comprehensive, neatly structured, and provides a great scientific context for introducing Perceptual Control Theory to the layperson. The explanation builds up gradually over the chapters. Fantastic.” – Warren Mansell, DPhil, DClinPsy, CPsychol […]

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