A Teacher
W. Ross Ashby
He showed that only variety can absorb variety, giving control its first exact law.
The transmission
William Ross Ashby was an English psychiatrist and a pioneering theorist of cybernetics and complex systems. In ‘Design for a Brain’ (1952) he argued that adaptive behaviour could emerge from purely mechanistic, self-organizing processes, and he built the homeostat to demonstrate it.
His ‘An Introduction to Cybernetics’ (1956) became a standard text and formulated the law of requisite variety, that a regulator must command at least as much variety as the disturbances it controls. His work gave cybernetics much of its rigorous conceptual vocabulary.
What they gave
The law of requisite variety: Formulated the exact principle that a regulator must command at least as much variety as the disturbances it controls.
- The homeostat: Built a working machine demonstrating that adaptive behavior can emerge from purely mechanistic, self-organizing processes.
- Design for a Brain: Argued that adaptation need invoke no vital force, grounding mind in self-regulating mechanism.
- Conceptual vocabulary of cybernetics: His ‘Introduction to Cybernetics’ became a standard text supplying the field much of its rigorous language.
The line they stand in
Taught by / Influenced by: Norbert Wiener; and Warren McCulloch.
- Taught / Influenced: Heinz von Foerster; and Norbert Wiener.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- Design for a Brain1952
- An Introduction to Cybernetics1956