Behavior as the Control of Perception: A Critical Study of William T. Powers's Behavior: The Control of Perception (1973)

This 89-page critical monograph provides a close exegetical, mathematical, and historiographical audit of the 1973 first edition of William T. Powers’s Behavior: The Control of Perception, the founding text of Perceptual Control Theory (PCT). Combining page-level textual analysis with Python-based numerical simulations of the original 1973 Appendix equations, this study evaluates five foundational pillars of Powers's architecture: the closed-loop inversion of stimulus-response causation, the nine-order perceptual hierarchy, learning as random ultrastable reorganization, The Test for the Controlled Quantity, and the structural mechanics of internal conflict and social control.