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

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry. Psychiatrists are physicians who evaluate patients to determine whether their symptoms are the result of a physical illness, a combination of physical and mental ailments or strictly ...

and a pioneer in

cybernetics Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with ...

, 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'', 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".

Early life and education

William Ross Ashby was born in 1903 in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, 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 generall ...

.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 St Bartholomew's Hospital, commonly known as Barts, is a teaching hospital located in the City of London. It was founded in 1123 by Rahere, and is currently run by Barts Health NHS Trust. History Early history Barts was founded in 1123 by Ra ...

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.

Career

Ashby started working in 1930 as a Clinical Psychiatrist at the London County Council. From 1936 until 1947 he was a Research Pathologist at St Andrew's Hospital in

Northampton Northampton ( ) is a town and civil parish in Northamptonshire, England. It is the county town of Northamptonshire and the administrative centre of the Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority of West Northamptonshire. The town is sit ...

in England. From 1945 to 1947 he served in India where he was a Major in the Royal Army Medical Corps. 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, non-metropolitan district and the county town of Gloucestershire in the South West England, South West of England. Gloucester lies on the River Severn, between the Cotswolds to the east and the Forest of Dean ...

from 1947 until 1959. For a year, he was Director of the Burden Neurological Institute 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, until his retirement in 1970. Ashby was president of the Society for General Systems Research from 1962 to 1964. After retiring in August 1970, he became an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the

University of Wales The University of Wales () 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 – the university was the first universit ...

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 Transdisciplinarity, transdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or artificial. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, de ...

and, more recently,

complex systems A complex system is a system composed of many components that may interact with one another. 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,

Norbert Wiener Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and philosopher. He became a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener late ...

, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Stafford Beer,

Stanley Milgram Stanley Milgram (August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984) was an American social psychologist known for his controversial Milgram experiment, experiments on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale University, Yale.Blass, T ...

, and

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

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 The brain is an organ (biology), organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It consists of nervous tissue and is typically located in the head (cephalization), usually near organs for ...

. 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, 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. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer ...

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 design by Alan Turing. Turing completed the ambitious design in late 1945, having had experience in the yea ...

(ACE) for his experiments instead of building a special machine.

, 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

Ashby was one of the original members of the Ratio Club, a small informal

dining club A dining club (UK) or eating club (US) is a Social club, 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 g ...

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 explanation, interpretatio ...

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

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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

s and

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

s who met to discuss issues in

. The club was founded in 1949 by the

neurologist Neurology (from , "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 nervous system, which comprises the brain, the ...

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

in ''

Cybernetics Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with ...

''. The book gave accounts of

homeostasis In biology, homeostasis (British English, British also homoeostasis; ) is the state of steady internal physics, physical and chemistry, chemical conditions maintained by organism, living systems. This is the condition of optimal functioning fo ...

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 p ...

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 remembe ...

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, George Klir, 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, 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 theorem is a theorem conceived by Roger C. Conant and W. Ross Ashby that is central to cybernetics. It was originally stated as "every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system". That is, any regulator that is ...

theorem" stating that "every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system". Stafford Beer 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 agency (philosophy) ...

and developing the Viable System Model. 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.

Legacy

The Papers of William Ross Ashby are housed at the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

. The papers can be accessed through the British Library catalogue. From 4 to 6 March 2004, a W. Ross Ashby centenary conference was held at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign 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 algebra and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Mathematical So ...

and George Klir.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 was specifically devoted to Ashby and his work, containing papers from leading scholars such as Klaus Krippendorff, Stuart Umpleby and Kevin Warwick. Ashby's work on the law of requisite variety has influenced scholars within the field of

management studies Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a government bodies through business administration, nonprofit management, or the political science sub-field of public administr ...

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.

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

in the Principia Cybernetica Web, 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 British 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 Military personnel from London