Bill's post refers to an outline Bill posted to 16 netters in mid-August.
The outline was addressed to Fred Good [(919) 942-8491, NVIEW@AOL.COM],
publisher of New View Publications, who now distributes what was CSG
books. Fred attended the Durango conference in July and has undertaken
to locate and approach foundations, soliciting support for a proposed
center. Because of the need to update the _PCT Introduction and Resource
Guide_, I have spoken with Fred recently and learned that the research
phase of his effort is finished. Fred told me that he identified some
20 foundations and that these things take on the order of two years to
come through. Fred is joining CSGnet.
Bill, you don't get criticisms on well written material. No disturbance
-- no response, remember? With a distribution of 16, no-one may feel
particularly called on to respond. Besides, it was understood that this
takes time. Also, I suspect you exaggerate. You may have forgotten
comments by phone etc.
Two subjects here. I see no basis at all for your conclusion in the
absence of feedback. Your own reluctance to work at it 80 hours a week
is another matter entirely.
Let me get philosophical for a moment. I find that as I have internalized
the systems concept of PCT, I have no choice but to see myself as an
autonomous living control system. I value my own ability to control my
perceptions freely. In my roles as father, husband, friend, teacher or
manager, I now strive to support others, especially those close to me,
to control theirs in a way that is satisfying to them. (This motivates
me to teach PCT to the world). PCT has become very important in my life.
Once I have learned PCT and decided that it makes more sense than any
other explanation for life that I have ever considered, I cannot erase
it. I expect PCT to be part of me for the rest of my life.
I think it is very important to teach PCT to the world. The impact on
society can be far-reaching. For instance, I see many practices change
in management of organizations as people understand PCT and change their
personal values as a consequence of that understanding.
The idea of the center is one thing. The form and scope of its
organization is another. You make several good points here. But nothing
precludes a foundation funding a center associated with or part of a
legitimate university. -- Just one possibility. This is something that
can be determined in discussion with the foundation and its contacts two
years from now.
I agree with you. I find the superstition in our society scary.
Events in the world of science will never "demand" PCT. We will never
be overwhelmed with people clamoring to know more UNLESS we make it
possible for people to imagine how their lives can be better from the
study of PCT. If that means suggesting that you can figure out what it
takes to resolve conflict with mutual satisfaction from a study of PCT,
then that may be what we should say. I believe PCT shows the way to much
more than that, though. See section III in the proposal below.
···
------------------------------------------------
Date: Aug 12 - 19, 1994
Subject: Center proposal. Draft by Bill Powers.
Assembled with comments by Dag Forssell. December 10, 1994.
I. Introduction
II. The mission of the Center
III. Assessment of needs: why the life sciences need PCT
IV. Objectives: How needs will be met
V. Methods: What we will do to accomplish the objectives
VI. Evaluation: How we will make sure we're doing what we propose to do.
VII. Future funding: plans beyond the grant period
VIII. Budget: what funds we need, what other sources will be sought.
Proposal for the organization of a
Center for the Study of Living Control Systems
I. Introduction
In late July of 1994, the tenth annual meeting of the Control Systems
Group took place at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. For ten
years, members of this interdisciplinary group have been exploring,
improving and teaching a new general theory of behavioral organization
called Perceptual Control Theory. The fields of application have been
diverse; they have included biochemistry, clinical psychology, control
engineering, economics, educational theory, experimental psychology,
linguistics, management consulting, marriage counselling, molecular
biology, neuroscience, organizational design, philosophy, physiology,
psychotherapy, rehabilitation, school reorganization, and sociology.
Scientists and other professionals in all these fields have found in
Perceptual Control Theory not only a common language that communicates
across the boundaries of their specialties, but a fundamentally new
insight into the nature of behavior that seems to thrown new light on
essentially every branch of the behavioral sciences.
The work leading to PCT began in the early 1950s at the V.A. Research
Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. Two physicists, William T. Powers and
Robert K. Clark, and one clinical psychologist, the late Robert L.
MacFarland, set out to explore the concepts of negative feedback control
as put forth by Norbert Wiener, Arturo Rosenbleuth, and Julian Bigelow
in their pioneering book, _Cybernetics: control and communication in the
animal and the machine_. This happened during a brief window in history
when the analog computer was the most widely-used tool for simulating
living systems. Soon the digital computer took over, leading the
mainstreams of behavioral science (and even Cybernetics) into a very
different approach to the function of the brain and the nature of
behavior. But the original three researchers persisted, publishing their
first work on a "General feedback theory of human behavior" in 1960 --
just in time to see the scientific world swinging onto a new path and
declaring control theory out of date.
The original group disbanded, but Bill Powers continued to develop the
basic ideas, lecturing occasionally and publishing a few papers,
encouraged by a few people such as Donald T. Campbell who urged him to
continue the work and keep it alive. In 1973, Powers published _Behavior:
the control of perception_, which attracted a much wider audience. Here
and there, scientists began to pick up on the basic concepts, often
astonished to find how long they had been in existence and how difficult
it had been to achieve acceptance of them among conventional behavioral
scientists. Year by year as Powers continued to publish, lecture, and
give seminars at psychology departments, the number of serious adherents
grew, until in 1985 there were enough interested people in one place at
one time to decide to form the Control Systems Group, or CSG.
In the ten years of its existence, this group has grown from 15 members
to 60 scattered across the United States and Canada. About four years
ago, a discussion group was begun on the internet; the list now includes
around 130 residents of 19 countries, only perhaps 20 of whom are part
of the original CSG. As a result of this wider discussion, the first
European Workshop on Perceptual Control Theory was held in June, 1994
under the auspices of the University of Wales in Aberystwyth, attracting
participants from England, Wales, Scotland, France, and Germany, as well
as members of the American CSG. The next meeting, as well as research
proposals for cooperative work in prosthetics and rehabilitation medicine
in the UK and United States, are now being planned. As this is being
written, paper collection is underway for a special issue of the
International Journal of Human-Computer Systems devoted entirely to PCT
and edited by the senior psychologist of the Defense and Civil Institute
for Environmental Medicine of Toronto, Canada. In the United States, a
special two-day seminar on PCT is being planned (by a Dean of Education
at an Eastern University) for the next meeting of the National
Educational Research Association. A prominent and widely-cited cellular
biologist is organizing a new institute for biochemical research and has
announced that he plans to use PCT as a major organizing principle for
the work of that institute. In Houston, Texas, a program for using PCT
to assess performance before and after surgery for spinal injuries is
under development; the neurosurgeon in charge has postponed all major
surgeries until the new system is in place. In Phoenix, Arizona, a group
of school principals and other administrators has been applying PCT to
discipline problems in inner-city schools, with remarkable results. A
member of the CSG, Edward Ford, has been travelling around the country
by invitation, teaching teachers, parents, and school boards how to apply
the principles of PCT. There seems suddenly to be a ferment of interest
in PCT spreading more rapidly and more widely than ever before in its
40-year history.
All this has come about without any plan or any organized attempt to gain
publicity -- all but accidentally. One person has taught another. All the
members of the CSG and of the internet group selected themselves, having
heard or read something about PCT and wanting to know more. There are
signs, however, that this unorganized approach will not suffice much
longer, and that the demand for education and research in PCT will very
soon exceed the informal capacities now available. That is why we are
planning a Center for the Study of Living Control Systems, and why we are
asking support to make it a reality.
["will not suffice much longer" -- suffice for what? This para needs
work. Concept: will not suffice to teach enough people to make an
impact, but will be held in check by institutional inertia, delaying
the spread of ----. It may suffice for a 40 yr adoption, not for a
10 yr adoption.]
II. The mission of the Center
The Center for the Study of Living Control Systems will serve to organize
the teaching of PCT, to coordinate research on PCT at colleges and
universities in the United States and abroad, to conduct scientific
meetings, workshops, and practicums on PCT, and to plan curricula leading
to advanced degrees in which PCT plays a major part. It is hoped that the
Center will be able to provide facilities for visiting scholars and
researchers where members of diverse disciplines can come together to do
real work on the nature of living control systems. It is hoped, too, that
the Center can provide public education on the meaning of PCT in
practical affairs, in industry, in the management of organizations.
By the nature of its subject matter, the Center will have, we hope, a
limited lifetime. Perceptual Control Theory is a theory of life; it is
a tool to be used wherever the phenomena of life are studied. The primary
purpose of the Center is to sharpen this tool to make it as useful as
possible, to put the tool into the hands of knowledgeable users, and to
pave the way for mainstream research to take over the use of this tool.
At some point in the future, in 10, 15, or 20 years, PCT will be taken
for granted in all the sciences of life. There will then be no more need
for a Center for the Study of Living Control Systems than there is for
a Center for the Study of the Roundness of the Earth.
III: Assessment of needs.
The fields of psychology and social science, which we can call
collectively the behavioral sciences, are, in the opinions of many of
their own practitioners as well as others, in deepening trouble. One
indication of the basic problem can be seen in a published survey of the
journals: the median correlation found between manipulated variables and
the behaviors they supposedly explain or predict was only 0.26.
[How about a reference for netters, perhaps for foundation.]
Just how bad this figure is can be conveyed by a seldom-used statistical
measure called the "coefficient of alienation," known informally as the
coefficient of uselessness. If r is the correlation, the coefficient of
uselessness is the square root of 1 - r^2. For a correlation of 0.26, the
coefficient of uselessness is 0.966. In approximate terms, this means
that if a supposed causal variable is manipulated and is discovered to
have a correlation of 0.26 with some measure of behavior in a population
of subjects, a prediction of the behavior of any one subject based simply
on the average behavior of the population would be about 97 percent as
accurate as a prediction based on knowledge of the manipulated variable.
So the manipulated variable is about 97 percent useless as a way of
predicting the behavior of individuals, regardless of how "significant"
the correlation is. Half of the studies necessary came out with lower
correlations than 0.26, which was the median.
[Math to involved for a foundation executive??]
The basic problem is that the theories of the psychological and social
sciences, the behavioral sciences, don't work for individual human
beings. Where they do work to some extent is for organizations like
governments, insurance companies, advertising firms, hospitals, and
schools where the measure of success is based on population averages and
the welfare of any one individual is irrelevant to the track record.
Because of this emphasis on mass statistics, it is possible to show small
but provable benefits of statistical measures to the organization, yet
at the same time to show that it is to no individual's advantage to be
judged by the same measures. In terms of the average correlations found
in the literature, the individual has nearly an even chance of being
described and treated incorrectly, often at great cost to the individual.
The failure of psychological theory has led to a split within psychology
itself. The "scientific" psychologists and the clinical psychologists no
longer even talk to one another. They have separate journals, separate
meetings, and separate societies that do not interact except for mutual
recriminations. Theory and practice in psychology have essentially
nothing to do with each other. And psychology has no relation to
sociology, and so forth through the whole set of independent and
unconnected subdisciplines. The whole enterprise is coming apart.
One of the great errors in the behavioral sciences has been to assume
that the importance of a problem somehow makes up for the inadequacy of
the methods being used to try to solve it. Certainly war, poverty,
ignorance, mental illness, the breakup of families, and crime are serious
problems and we need to solve them. When the impossibility of solving
them using knowledge based on correlations of 0.26 is pointed out, the
rejoinder is that it's better to do something with what we have than to
do nothing. But the claim that using such methods is "doing something "
is warranted only in the sense that there is some kind of activity going
on rather than none. And even worse, because we are "doing something,"
the implication is that we should continue doing it some more -- not
because it is doing any good, but simply because we are doing it.
What is needed is a basis for behavioral science that is as solid as the
basis of physics. The only problem with establishing such a foundation
is that we would actually have to go back to basics, to do experiments
as simple as those of Galileo rolling little balls down an inclined plane
and timing their speed with his pulse. Galileo had no inkling of the
physical sciences that would grow out of his simple determinations of
properties of nature. He was not trying to solve the big problems, but
the little ones. The reason he had to start with the little problems is
that he was looking for answers that would remain true under all
conditions, all of the time; not correlations of 0.26. Only when a
collection of predictions of very high quality existed could he or anyone
else go on to construct the next level of complexity, and the next. Only
by maintaining the standard that a theory should explain observations as
accurately as we can measure them could this progression be maintained
from year to year and century to century. Only in that way could a
science come into existence: out of small facts of very, very high
quality.
The most ambitious undertaking that could be mounted in the behavioral
sciences would be to start all over from scratch. This would mean
questioning all the old assumptions, looking for ways of characterizing
behavior which, no matter how simple or seemingly unimportant, would
correctly predict behavior to the limit of our ability to measure it.
That how physics and chemistry got started. It is the only way in which
a true science of behavior can be built.
IV: Objectives: meeting the needs
In the Introduction, the history of the Control Systems Group, and of the
theoretical approach behind it, was laid out. From that, it should be
clear that work on a basically new science of behavior was actually begun
long ago. As in the case of many scientific revolutions, it was made
possible by a discovery in an unrelated field: the discovery by
electronics engineers of the principles of negative feedback control. It
is seldom remembered that this discovery came about because the engineers
were trying to build devices that would imitate a living system: a person
performing the kind of behavior we call controlling.
As in many other cases, the real significance of the discovery was not
immediately recognized. The founders of PCT were not aware of the
radically new nature of the control-system model; indeed, they naively
thought that once it was developed to a certain point, behavioral
scientists would welcome it as a step forward. Twenty years passed before
the realization came that control theory and the phenomena to which it
is addressed are completely at odds with the fundamental assumptions
behind the behavioral sciences. The inexplicable refusal to treat these
new ideas seriously suddenly became understandable: if the control-
system model was right, then essentially everything important that the
behavioral sciences thought they knew about behavior was wrong. To adopt
control theory was for all practical purposes to start the behavioral
sciences over again, from scratch.
The small number of people actually doing experimental work is a partial
explanation of why progress has been so slow, but is by no means the full
explanation. What has really made progress so slow is that experimental
work has been done under a very severe requirement: that every basic
concept, before being accept as part of the "official" model, be
demonstrated beyond doubt, quantitatively. Finding the right instance of
a PCT model was a matter of rejecting many models which did not meet this
criterion.
It is very easy to do statistical research; practically any hypothesis,
if tested on a large enough population, will eventually produce
correlations with a publishable confidence level. But if the correlations
one insists upon getting out of an analysis (of any kind) are 0.95 and
up, the number of successful experiments must inevitably drop very
sharply. It is not easy to find phenomena of nature that are highly
reliable and replicable. It is no easier in psychology than it is in
physics. But it is just as necessary in either science.
Real experimentation with PCT was not possible until small computers
became available to workers operating on small or nonexistent budgets.
The first tentative experiments with PCT were done with a big slow
minicomputer programmed with paper tape, and then with a much more
powerful home-built computer kit with a memory capacity of 0.016
megabyte. Prior to that time, only possibilities could be explored using
pencil-and-paper analysis: there was never any funding for experimental
equipment.
What seems obvious to us now was, in 1973, a complete mystery. It was not
self-evident how a model of behavior should be constructed, even though
a hypothetical outline of the structure existed. Once the small-computer
revolution made the design of real-time experiments feasible, many very
complex possibilities were explored. There was a reluctance to believe
that the correct model could be simple. Yet the best model of simple
tracking behavior that was first found could be written in four short
lines of Pascal computer code:
e := r - c
c = d[t] + h
h := h + k*e
t := t + 1
[This part is probably too technical.]
This code segment, executed again and again, is a model of tracking
behavior in a human being. The human being uses a handle to hold a cursor
stationary at a fixed target location; the cursor is being pushed this
way and that by a continuously varying disturbance (d[t]). For any random
pattern of disturbance that is smoothed to a bandwidth of about 1 Hz,
which makes holding the cursor in one place fairly difficult, this model
will create the same pattern of handle movements that the live subject
creates for the same disturbance pattern, with an accuracy of about 5
percent. If a tracing of the subject's handle movements against time is
laid over a similar tracing created by the above program, the two traces
will coincide everywhere, for a 60-second run at 30 samples per second,
with a mean square error of five percent of the peak-to-peak variations,
or less. The correlation between the model's simulated handle behavior
and the subject's real handle behavior is typically 0.99 or higher.
This degree of match of model to real behavior is achieved by adjusting
a single constant: k in the third line above. For a fully practiced
subject, k comes to a very stable value, which repeats experiment after
experiment.
Using this best-fit value of k, it is possible to run the model with a
new pattern of disturbances to create a prediction of a subject's handle
movements in a later experiment employing the same new disturbance
pattern. When that is done, the predicted behavior still correlates above
0.99 with the subject's behavior in the subsequent test. And, as a CSG
member with extraordinary patience proved, a prediction made for a
particular subject in this way, using a pattern of disturbance not before
experienced, achieved the same level of accuracy when the experiment to
test the prediction was done five years later. The five-year test was
done at a CSG meeting. When the results appeared on the screen, there
were cheers. In another five years, the 10-year test will be done, using
a different disturbance pattern and prediction generated at the same time
as the first one. There are three more data sets waiting for the
remaining three tests.
The behavior that is the subject of these experiments is considered
simple even by PCT researchers; they call it, affectionately but
realistically, "stick-wiggling." It is a simple and unimportant kind of
behavior. But that is not what matters. What matters is that we have a
model and a number characterizing real individual human behavior which
together constitute a fact of the very highest quality, at least an order
of magnitude better than any fact that the behavioral sciences have been
able to produce before. This first fact is a foundation stone, and when
enough such foundation stones have been laid, a science can be built on
them.
Since the first stick-wiggling experiments, many more have been done.
Human control of shape, size, relationship, rotation rate, and sound
pitch have been done, with the same or a slightly more advanced model
(containing perceptual delays) being matched to them with the same
accuracy as initially found. More high-quality facts, more stones in the
foundation. There have been tentative explorations of even more complex
behavior, for an extreme example the behavior of defending a self-concept
against invalidation. Here no quantitative measures of handle positions
could be used, but when the right experiment was found (after several
false starts), the number of subjects demonstrating exactly the predicted
phenomenon was 25 out of 26; one response was unscorable.
In the realm of modeling, a PCT simulation of crowd behavior was done,
in which each individual was a set of two or three elementary control
systems controlling for one or more specific conditions: reaching a
target, following another person at a specific distance, and avoiding
collisions with other people or stationary objects. Up to 256 active
persons could be on the computer screen at one time. Various setups were
tested, producing phenomena which a sociologist immediately recognized
as recurrent phenomena seen during his decades of observational work on
crowd behavior.
Still another model translates the stretch and tendon reflexes in a human
arm into a PCT type of model, which explains clearly how these reflexes
work. Combined with a model of visual control systems, this "Little Man",
which lives in a desktop computer, can reach out and track a moving
target in three dimensions, in real time, showing trajectories like those
seen in real human subjects. The response of the arm to muscle forces is
calculated using a correct model of physical dynamics; a realistic model
of muscle operation is used. Models offered by others to explain the same
behavior are too complex to work in real time; they involve the
calculation of inverse dynamics and kinematics which are not required in
the PCT model, and they cannot work in the present of unpredictable
disturbances as the Little Man can. And the Little Man can not only reach
out and touch the target; he can draw continuous circles in the air
around it, even as it moves in arbitrary and completely unpredicted
patterns.
The crowd simulation and the Little Man program are the first signs of
a skeletal structure beginning to rise from the foundations.
Everything that the Center for the Study of Living Control Systems does
will be aimed at extending the foundational work and exploring the first
layers of the experimental science that will rest on the foundation. A
great deal of additional work will be needed and many people will be
needed to carry it out. So we must raise a new generation of scientists
prepared to do this research, and attract as many established scientists
as possible into it, wherever they choose to do their work. We must teach
this new collection of researchers to maintain a standard for the
acceptance of new facts that is very different from the one that is
presently maintained in the behavioral sciences. The fact that progress
can be made under the most exacting standards, however slowly, should
encourage others to try doing the same thing. The results will stand for
generations.
Comment by Bill P. with transmission of section V.:
Here is a possible next section in Fred Good's outline for our
proposal. It introduces some new considerations that may suggest
rewrites of the preceding sections. Please contribute to this and say
what you think of it. If Fred pulls this off, the pipe dream may
suddenly start looking like a reality, and call for some concrete
decisions and commitments from those who claim to be supporters of
PCT. We all have to start thinking of what we would really do if
suddenly $2,000,000 appears with the go-ahead to carry out the plan.
Life could not continue as it is now.
V. Methods.
The transition from the current state of research in PCT to a fully
functioning Center will require achieving a series of intermediate goals
as well as a change of focus. Those interested in this field have, over
several decades, become used to working in relative isolation most of
the time, on small or nonexistent budgets, in whatever time could be
spared from the requirements of making a living and a career. Those who
have worked the longest are nearing or have passed retirement age, and
while still productive are no longer driven by the ambitions and hopes
of youth, or equipped with its energy. When the Center reaches the point
of becoming fully operational, it should be under the command of a
younger generation with the elders serving in an advisory capacity.
The first business of the Center, therefore, must be that of passing the
torch so that all that is of value in the knowledge and lore of PCT
might be preserved in the generation that will carry on the work into
the 21st Century.
The first step: internal education
As matters stand now, there are perhaps six or eight people who
understand both the general principles of PCT and the detailed
mathematical and practical approaches to systematic quantitative
research in this field. Following closely behind them is a larger group
which has a good grasp of principles, but little experience with
modeling and experimentation of the kind needed. And the largest group
of those interested has only a subjective and practical knowledge of PCT,
with a limited ability to apply it in new areas. This situation is the
result of the realities of life: a group that meets only once a year has
little chance for systematic teaching and learning, so that progress up
the ladder of understanding is very slow. There is no basic textbook,
there is no curriculum of background studies, there is little time for
concentrated learning, and for younger members there has never been any
way to devote full time to the study of PCT while developing a career
and supporting a family.
The first step toward creation of a Center for the Study of Living
Control Systems must therefore be to bring together a substantial number
of those interested and turn them into experts with the skills and
knowledge required to initiate and carry out PCT research -- or at least
put them well on the road toward this end. A core group of ten to twenty
people is needed. These people will be required to go through
considerable inconvenience and to make a commitment that may have
repercussions on their careers and income, because the training period
should go on for the equivalent of at least a full school year.
Our of this initial training period there should emerge a new generation
of PCT researchers ready to teach others and to take up the threads of
research that have been started during the last 20 years. The temporary
college may well become a permanent one, the physical and intellectual
nucleus of the Center. The experiences of this year of teaching will
lead to the writing of a textbook and the creation of a curriculum which
can be adopted by other centers of education. The infrastructure
developed during this year will become the mechanism for coordinating
research and applications, for organizing interdisciplinary meetings
both national and international, and for organizing applications of PCT
in schools, businesses, and other places. The physical plant will become
a place for visiting scholars and researchers to carry out projects and
establish collaborations. In short, we should emerge from this initial
year with a Center that is nearly in operational condition.
It should be mentioned that the "students" who will take part in this
project will not be any ordinary kind of students. Most of them will
have degrees in some discipline, and some will have had ten or twenty
years' experience as university professors, or the equivalent in some
profession. We will encourage the participation of some new college
graduates or candidates for advanced degrees, but the initial cadre will
be largely composed of experienced people -- who happen to have lacked
the particular training needed for a technical understanding of PCT. The
lack of this training can be understood if it is realized that these
people will come from fields such as educational research, linguistics,
sociology, biochemistry, economics, clinical and experimental
psychology, and organizational development. Although the emphasis will
be on filling in the technical aspects of an education in PCT, the
course will greatly benefit from the experience of the students, so in
some respects it will resemble a workshop. These rather overqualified
students will be well-equipped to write a textbook on the very subjects
they have just finished assimilating, and to make it an
interdisciplinary textbook as well.
The sponsor is going to have to be firmly convinced of the long-term
value of PCT research, because a considerable financial outlay will be
needed to make this project feasible. In effect, we will be setting up
a temporary college, which will require a physical location, equipment,
and administrative support. We may need to hire teachers -- for example,
a mathematics teacher, a teacher of basic servomechanism technology, and
a teacher of computer programming. It will be necessary to support some
or all of the attendees as well as those teachers without an independent
income with a sufficient salary to maintain their families while this
educational period is going on. And preparing the curriculum is going to
take on the order of six months, during which time the teaching group
will require support and a place to work.
Furthermore, the real test of the Center will come only after the first
year; the initial group of students will turn around and become those in
charge of the Center and the teachers of the next group, which will
surely include many applicants from outside the Control Systems Group.
As students return to their institutions, there will be increasing
interest in learning about PCT; it will quickly become important to
provide curriculum materials to colleges and universities if only to
avoid swamping the Center.
So the total support that the sponsor must contemplate providing will
have to cover not just the first year, but two or three years following,
perhaps for a total of as much as five years. After the first year or
two, the Center may be able to generate income through charging for the
main courses, and for consulting with schools, businesses, and
governments concerning problems to which PCT may offer solutions. But
the sponsor should consider that this must be a relatively long-term
commitment.
[No draft has been prepared for the following three sections. As I
understand it, the breakdown in eight sections was suggested to Bill
by Fred Good, as appropriate for a generic proposal. There is
probably nothing sacred about this outline. Fred tells me that
foundations have widely divergent expectations of proposals. I think
the idea of PCT and the idea of teaching it sooner rather than later
is the central part of our proposal. The scope and form of a center
can be highly flexible.]
VI. Evaluation: How we will make sure we're doing what we propose to do.
[Is this important as part of the proposal? Whoever funds the center
can participate and be fully informed. The idea of PCT, once
conveyed, will make the funding decision maker committed.]
VII. Future funding: plans beyond the grant period
[Is this important as part of the proposal? Do we have to answer up
front? Again, the idea of PCT, once understood, might make it moot.
This kind of issue, if it is an issue, might be better discussed with
a real, flesh and bones, funding person who has particular concerns
or constraints.]
VIII Budget: what funds we need, what other sources will be sought.
["what funds we need" is a problem. We don't. A funding person who
understands PCT might be prepared to commit $250,000 per year. We can
do something with that. A funding person who can see the potential of
PCT to promote world peace might want to commit $10 million per year
for 10 years. We can do something with that. All kinds of life
scientists will suddenly participate and publish up a storm. Money
talks.
I find it hard to get excited about these last sections. I imagine
that is why Bill has not offered a draft in response to Fred's
request. How about leaving these open. Let us concentrate on
developing a proposal that is compelling in the first sections.
Perhaps the last sections can be glossed over to almost nothing.]
--------------------------
Best, Dag