Bill Powers – The Developer of PCT
This is William T. Powers - ‘Bill’ to everyone who knows him
Bill is a scientist, engineer and a polymath.
He is passionate about his work and compassionate in his relations with colleagues. He is a humble genius. He is most certainly not a guru – he hates that word! He is not a professor or a PhD, so you don’t have to call him ‘Doc’ or ‘Prof’!
Bill has made it his life work to understand how living things ‘control’. In doing so, Bill goes out of his way to try to help people understand the theory he has created. He is the author of several great books, and a multitude of the most colourful and engaging letters and emails you might have ever read about a ‘theory’…
In short, the man is a dude…
How did it all start? Well, Bill developed PCT a long time ago…
He began his work on the theory in the 1950s and continues to develop, illustrate and apply the theory today.
Bill trained as a physicist and engineer, becoming well versed in the field of control engineering. This field is literally ancient. The first reported control engineered device was built by the Egyptian inventor Ktesibios in 200BC - a float-valve controller for keeping the water in a water-clock's reservoir precisely at a fixed level.
Bizarrely, this field did not take off until the 1940s, when devices such as autopilots and sound-tracking torpedos were frantically developed for World War Two.
As a young boy of seventeen fresh from high-school, Bill joined the Navy to train and serve as an electronics technician, where he learned about control devices. Here is Bill with his family at around that time. He’s the one on the top left.
His sister's publishing company, Benchmark Publications Inc., is publisher of record of a half-dozen of his most recent works, including the second edition, revised and expanded, of the original Behavior: The Control of Perception (2005), and the forthcoming book, Living Control Systems III: the Fact of Control, 2008. The above picture shows Bill with his late wife, Mary.
Bill became fascinated in the field with Cybernetics in the late 1940s and early 1950s – this was the first major attempt to try to apply control engineering principles to human psychology.
After seven years of work, Bill published his first paper on what was to become PCT with colleagues Robert Kenley Clark and Robert MacFarland (Powers, Clark, & MacFarland, 1960). His undergraduate mentor Donald T. Campbell paved the way for a degree in psychology, yet ultimately, Bill chose instead to continue his work on designing electronic systems while pursuing PCT ‘on the side’.
In 1973, Bill published Behavior: The Control of Perception (B:CP) – a full exposition of PCT that is now the key reference on the theory. On publication, B:CP was showered with praise, for example by such notable figures as Carl Rogers, the creator of person-centred counselling, and Thomas Kuhn the philosopher of science.
Since 1985, Bill has facilitated the Control Systems Group – an international group of individuals who utilise, study and discuss PCT within a huge range of disciplines. This organisation continues to grow and provide the catalyst for developments in PCT.
In 1998, Bill published Making Sense of Behavior: The Meaning of Control – an accessible ‘arm-chair’ introduction to PCT. There are now a wide range of books explaining PCT, including Living Control Systems I and II – edited volumes of Bill’s essays and papers on PCT.
Bill’s latest book - Living Control Systems III: The Fact of Control – is a tour de force in psychology, philosophy, mathematics and computing. Accompanied by a CD of thirteen sophisticated computer demonstrations of PCT, it provides the best exposition yet of what PCT can offer.
But don’t take our word for it… Have a browse of the website to see what PCT can do for you. If you are struggling, one of us can probably help you out… Bill included!
Where is PCT now? If you track the number of times academic papers have cited PCT, the figures are impressive - over 1000 times, and increasing every year...
To see the papers that cite Bill's key 1973 book, click here.