W. Ross Ashby (6 September 1903 – 15 November 1972) was an English

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...

and a pioneer in

cybernetics Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson m ...

, the study of the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things. His first name was not used: he was known as Ross Ashby. His two books, ''Design for a Brain'' and ''

An Introduction to Cybernetics An, AN, aN, or an may refer to: Businesses and organizations * Airlinair (IATA airline code AN) * Alleanza Nazionale, a former political party in Italy * AnimeNEXT, an annual anime convention located in New Jersey * Anime North, a Canadian an ...

'', introduced exact and logical thinking into the brand new discipline of cybernetics and were highly influential. These "missionary works" along with his technical contributions made Ashby "the major theoretician of cybernetics after Wiener".

Biography

William Ross Ashby was born in 1903 in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, where his father was working at an

advertising agency An advertising agency, often referred to as a creative agency or an ad agency, is a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and sometimes other forms of promotion and marketing for its clients. An ad agency is generally ...

.Biography of W. Ross Ashby
The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive, 2008. From 1921 he studied at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he received his B.A. in 1924 and his M.B. and B.Ch. in 1928. From 1924 to 1928 he worked at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Later on he also received a Diploma in Psychological Medicine in 1931, and an M.A. 1930 and M.D. from Cambridge in 1935. Ross Ashby started working in 1930 as a Clinical Psychiatrist at the

London County Council London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today kno ...

. From 1936 until 1947 he was a Research Pathologist at St Andrew's Hospital in

Northampton Northampton () is a market town and civil parish in the East Midlands of England, on the River Nene, north-west of London and south-east of Birmingham. The county town of Northamptonshire, Northampton is one of the largest towns in England; ...

in England. From 1945 to 1947 he served in India where he was a Major in the

Royal Army Medical Corps The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) is a specialist corps in the British Army which provides medical services to all Army personnel and their families, in war and in peace. The RAMC, the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, the Royal Army Dental Corps a ...

. When he returned to England, he served as Director of Research of the

Barnwood House Hospital Barnwood House Hospital was a private mental hospital in Barnwood, Gloucester, England. It was founded by the Gloucester Asylum Trust in 1860 as Barnwood House Institution and later became known as Barnwood House Hospital.Gloucester Gloucester ( ) is a cathedral city and the county town of Gloucestershire in the South West of England. Gloucester lies on the River Severn, between the Cotswolds to the east and the Forest of Dean to the west, east of Monmouth and east ...

from 1947 until 1959. For a year, he was Director of the

Burden Neurological Institute __NOTOC__ Stoke Park Hospital, was a large hospital for the mental handicapped, closed circa 1997, situated on the north-east edge of Bristol, England, just within South Gloucestershire. Most patients were long-term residents, both adults and ...

in Bristol. In 1960, he went to the United States and became Professor, Depts. of Biophysics and Electrical Engineering,

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universit ...

, until his retirement in 1970. Ashby was president of the

Society for General Systems Research The International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) is a worldwide organization for systems sciences. The overall purpose of the ISSS is: :"to promote the development of conceptual frameworks based on general system theory, as well as their ...

from 1962 to 1964. After retiring in August 1970, he became an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the

University of Wales The University of Wales (Welsh language, Welsh: ''Prifysgol Cymru'') is a confederal university based in Cardiff, Wales. Founded by royal charter in 1893 as a federal university with three constituent colleges – Aberystwyth, Bangor and Cardiff � ...

in 1970 and a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1971. In June 1972 he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, and he died on 15 November.

Work

Despite being widely influential within

systems theory Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structu ...

and, more recently,

complex systems A complex system is a system composed of many components which may interact with each other. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication s ...

, Ashby is not as well known as many of the notable scientists his work influenced, including

Herbert A. Simon Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was an American political scientist, with a Ph.D. in political science, whose work also influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary ...

, Norbert Wiener,

Ludwig von Bertalanffy Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy (19 September 1901 – 12 June 1972) was an Austrian biologist known as one of the founders of general systems theory (GST). This is an interdisciplinary practice that describes systems with interacting components, app ...

Stafford Beer Anthony Stafford Beer (25 September 1926 – 23 August 2002) was a British theorist, consultant and professor at the Manchester Business School. He is best known for his work in the fields of operational research and management cybernetics. ...

, Stanley Milgram, and

Stuart Kauffman Stuart Alan Kauffman (born September 28, 1939) is an American medical doctor, theoretical biologist, and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth. He was a professor at the University of Chicago, University of Pennsylv ...

Journal

Ashby kept a journal for over 44 years in which he recorded his ideas about new theories. He started May 1928, when he was medical student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Over the years, he wrote down a series of 25 volumes totaling 7,189 pages. In 2003, these journals were given to The British Library, London, and in 2008, they were made available online as The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive. Ashby initially considered his theorizing a private hobby, and his later decision to begin publishing his work caused him some distress. He wrote:

My fear is now that I may become conspicuous, for a book of mine is in the press. For this sort of success I have no liking. My ambitions are vague—someday to produce something faultless.

Ashby found writing so difficult that he took correspondence courses in "Effective English and Personal Efficiency" to prepare to write his first book.

Adaptation

Ashby was interested in mechanistic explanations for adaptive behavior, especially in the

brain A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a v ...

. By 1941, he had developed a coherent theory and written a 197-page booklet, titled "The Origin of Adaptation". This hand-written monograph was made publicly available in January 2021.W.R. Ashby, "The Origin of Adaptation", 1941, British Library, London. Available online
W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive
2021. In it, he expressed his opinion that "there is an abstract science of organisation, in the sense that there are laws, theories and discoveries to be made about organisation as such without asking what it is that is organised." In 1948 Ashby built a machine, the

Homeostat The Homeostat is one of the first devices capable of adapting itself to the environment; it exhibited behaviours such as habituation, reinforcement and learning through its ability to maintain homeostasis in a changing environment. It was built b ...

, to demonstrate his theories. The machine used a simple mechanical process to return to equilibrium states after disturbances at its input. Earlier, in 1946,

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical com ...

had written a letter to Ashby suggesting that Ashby use Turing's

Automatic Computing Engine The Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) was a British early Electronic storage, electronic Serial computer, serial stored-program computer designed by Alan Turing. It was based on the earlier Pilot ACE. It led to the MOSAIC computer, the Bendi ...

(ACE) for his experiments instead of building a special machine. Norbert Wiener, describing the appearance of purposeful behavior in the Homeostat's random search for equilibrium, called it "one of the great philosophical contributions of the present day". Ashby's first book, ''Design for a Brain'', was published in 1952 and recapitulated this line of research.

Cybernetics

Ross Ashby was one of the original members of the

Ratio Club The Ratio Club was a small British informal dining club from 1949 to 1958 of young psychiatrists, psychologists, physiologists, mathematicians and engineers who met to discuss issues in cybernetics., p. 95. History The idea of the club arose ...

, a small informal

dining club A dining club (UK) or eating club (US) is a social group, usually requiring membership (which may, or may not be available only to certain people), which meets for dinners and discussion on a regular basis. They may also often have guest speakers. ...

of young

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...

physiologists Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

s and

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

s who met to discuss issues in

. The club was founded in 1949 by the

neurologist Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal c ...

John Bates and continued to meet until 1958. The title of his book ''An Introduction to Cybernetics'' popularised the usage of the term 'cybernetics' to refer to self-regulating systems, originally coined by Norbert Wiener in ''

Cybernetics Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson m ...

''. The book gave accounts of

homeostasis In biology, homeostasis (British English, British also homoeostasis) Help:IPA/English, (/hɒmɪə(ʊ)ˈsteɪsɪs/) is the state of steady internal, physics, physical, and chemistry, chemical conditions maintained by organism, living systems. Thi ...

adaptation In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process of natural selection that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the po ...

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...

and foresight in living organisms in Ashby's determinist, mechanist terms. Ashby's 1964 paper ''Constraint Analysis of Many-Dimensional Relations'' began the study of reconstructability analysis, a multivariate systems modeling methodology based on set theory and information theory, which would later be developed by

Klaus Krippendorff Klaus Krippendorff (1932–2022) was a communication scholar, social science methodologist, and cyberneticist. and was the Gregory Bateson professor for Cybernetics, Language, and Culture at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for ...

George Klir George Jiří Klir (April 22, 1932 – May 27, 2016) was a Czech-American computer scientist and professor of systems sciences at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York. Biography George Klir was born in 1932 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. ...

, and others. In 1970, Ashby collaborated on simulation experiments regarding the stability of large interconnected systems. This work inspired Robert May's studies of stability and complexity in model ecosystems.

Variety

In ''An Introduction to Cybernetics'', Ashby used set cardinality, or

variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

, as a measure of information. With this he formulated his Law of Requisite Variety. Mathematically, the law is a statement about how "in a two-person game the variety possible is determined by the number of possible choices open to the two players". When regulation is seen as a game between a regulator

R

and source of disturbances

D

, "only variety in

R

can force down the variety due to

D

; ''only variety can destroy variety.''" In work with Ashby, Conant augmented this with the "

Good Regulator The good regulator is a theorem conceived by Roger C. Conant and W. Ross Ashby that is central to cybernetics. Originally stated that "every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system", but more accurately, every good regulator must ...

theorem" stating that "every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system".

applied the law of variety to the practice of management, founding

management cybernetics Management cybernetics is concerned with the application of cybernetics to management and organizations. "Management cybernetics" was first introduced by Stafford Beer in the late 1950s and introduces the various mechanisms of self-regulation appli ...

and developing the

Viable System Model The viable system model (VSM) is a model of the organizational structure of any autonomous system capable of producing itself. A viable system is any system organised in such a way as to meet the demands of surviving in the changing environment. On ...

. A popular paraphrasing of the law is "only complexity absorbs complexity". However, while a web search reveals many attributions to Ashby, it appears such attribution is in error. The phrase is not listed by the

Cybernetics Society The Cybernetics Society is a UK-based learned society that exists to promote the understanding of Cybernetics. The core activity of the Cybernetics Society is the organization and facilitation of scientific meetings, conferences, and social events ...

Legacy

The Papers of William Ross Ashby are housed at the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

. The papers can be accessed through the British Library catalogue. On 4–6 March 2004, a W. Ross Ashby centenary conference was held at the

to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth. Presenters at the conference included

Stephen Wolfram Stephen Wolfram (; born 29 August 1959) is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer science, mathematics, and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Ma ...

and

.W. Ross Ashby Centenary Conference
The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive, 2008 In February 2009, a special issue of the

International Journal of General Systems The ''International Journal of General Systems'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research on basic and applied aspects of systems science and systems methodology. Its focus is on "general systems" – systems ideas that have ...

was specifically devoted to Ashby and his work, containing papers from leading scholars such as

Stuart Umpleby Stuart Anspach Umpleby (born March 5, 1944) is an American cybernetician and professor in the Department of Management and Director of the Research Program in Social and Organizational Learning in the School of Business at the George Washington Un ...

and

Kevin Warwick Kevin Warwick (born 9 February 1954) is an English engineer and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Coventry University. He is known for his studies on direct interfaces between computer systems and the human nervous system, and has also done ...

Publications

;Books * 1952.
Design for a Brain
', Chapman & Hall. * 1956.

', Chapman & Hall. * 1981. Conant, Roger C. (ed.).

', Intersystems Publishers. ;Articles, a selection * 1940. "Adaptiveness and equilibrium". In: ''J. Ment. Sci.'' 86, 478. * 1945. "Effects of control on stability". In: ''Nature'', London, 155, 242–243. * 1946. "The behavioural properties of systems in equilibrium". In: ''Amer. J. Psychol.'' 59, 682–686. * 1947. "Principles of the Self-Organizing Dynamic System". In: ''Journal of General Psychology'' (1947). volume 37, pages 125–128. * 1948. "The homeostat". In: ''Electron'', 20, 380. * 1962. "Principles of the Self-Organizing System". In: Heinz Von Foerster and George W. Zopf, Jr. (eds.), ''Principles of Self-Organization'' (Sponsored by Information Systems Branch, US Office of Naval Research). Republished as
PDF
in Emergence: Complexity and Organization (E:CO) Special Double Issue Vol. 6, Nos. 1–2 2004, pp. 102–126. ;About W. Ross Ashby *

Untold lives blog, 20 April 2016:
Pioneering cybernetics: an introduction to W Ross Ashby
'. * Asaro, Peter (2008).
"From Mechanisms of Adaptation to Intelligence Amplifiers: The Philosophy of W. Ross Ashby,"
' in Michael Wheeler, Philip Husbands and Owen Holland (eds.) ''The Mechanical Mind in History'', Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

References

External links

includes an extensive biography, bibliography, letters, photographs, movies, and fully indexed images of all 7,189 pages of Ashby's 25 volume journal.

with a short text from the ''Encyclopædia Britannica Yearbook'' 1973, and some links. * Asaro, Peter M. (2008)
"From Mechanisms of Adaptation to Intelligence Amplifiers: The Philosophy of W. Ross Ashby,"
in Michael Wheeler, Philip Husbands and Owen Holland (eds.
The Mechanical Mind in History
Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, pp. 149–184.

web page by

Cosma Shalizi Cosma Rohilla Shalizi (born February 28, 1974) is an associate professor in the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Life Cosma Rohilla Shalizi is of Tamil, Afghan and Italian heritage and was born in Boston, ...

, 1999.
W. Ross Ashby (1956): ''An Introduction to Cybernetics'', (Chapman & Hall, London): available electronically
Principia Cybernetica Web, 1999

in the

Principia Cybernetica Web Principia Cybernetica is an international cooperation of scientists in the field of cybernetics and systems science, especially known for their website, Principia Cybernetica. They have dedicated their organization to what they call "a computer-su ...

, 2001.
159 Aphorisms from Ashby and further links at the Cybernetics Society

(1956) from ''An Introduction to Cybernetics''

(1960) from ''Design for a Brain'' * Livas short introductory videos {{DEFAULTSORT:Ashby, William Ross 1903 births 1972 deaths Alumni of the Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital Artificial intelligence researchers Control theorists Cyberneticists English psychiatrists Medical doctors from London Systems psychologists Complex systems scientists Alumni of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge British systems scientists 20th-century English medical doctors British Army personnel of World War II Royal Army Medical Corps officers Presidents of the International Society for the Systems Sciences