View source for W. Ross Ashby

{{Short description|English psychiatrist (1903–1972)}}
{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name        = W. Ross Ashby
| image       = W. Ross Ashby (1948).jpg
| caption     = W. Ross Ashby (1948)
| birth_date  = {{birth date|df=yes|1903|09|06}}
| birth_place = [[London]], England
| death_date  = {{death date and age|df=yes|1972|11|15|1903|09|06}}
| fields      = [[Psychiatry]], [[Cybernetics]], [[Systems theory]]
| known_for   = [[Cybernetics]], [[Variety (cybernetics)#Law of requisite variety|Law of Requisite Variety]], Principle of [[Self-organization#Principles|Self-organization]]
| signature   = W. Ross Ashby signature, Letter from Ashby to Jacques Riguet, dated 20 April 1953.svg
}}
'''William Ross Ashby''' (6 September 1903 – 15 November 1972) was an English [[psychiatrist]] and a pioneer in [[cybernetics]], 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'''.<ref name="Pickering Brain"/>{{rp|91}}

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.<ref name="Pickering Brain">{{cite book
| last      = Pickering
| first     = Andrew
| date      = 2010
| title     = The Cybernetic Brain
| location  = London
| publisher = University of Chicago Press
}}</ref>{{rp|93}} These "missionary works" along with his technical contributions made Ashby "the major theoretician of cybernetics after [[Norbert Wiener|Wiener]]".<ref name="Lilienfeld Systems"/><ref name="Klir Architecture"/>{{rp|28}}

== Early life and education ==
William Ross Ashby was born in 1903 in [[London]], where his father was working at an [[advertising agency]].<ref name="bio">[http://www.ashby.info/biography.html Biography of W. Ross Ashby] The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive, 2008.</ref> 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.<ref name="Pickering Brain"/>{{rp|91}}

==Career==
[[File:W. Ross Ashby, c. 1924, aged about 21.jpg|thumb|Ashby, c. 1924, aged about 21]]
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]] in England. From 1945 to 1947 he served in India where he was a Major in the [[Royal Army Medical Corps]].<ref name="Pickering Brain"/>{{rp|92}}

When he returned to England, he served as Director of Research of the [[Barnwood House Hospital]] in [[Gloucester]] 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.<ref>[http://www.ashby.info/autobiography.html Autobiographical summary], taken from Ashby's own notes, made about 1972.</ref>

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]] 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.<ref name="bio"/>

== Work ==
Despite being widely influential within [[cybernetics]], [[systems theory]] and, more recently, [[complex systems]], Ashby is not as well known as many of the notable scientists his work influenced, including [[Herbert A. Simon]], [[Norbert Wiener]], [[Ludwig von Bertalanffy]], [[Stafford Beer]], [[Stanley Milgram]], and [[Stuart Kauffman]].<ref>Cosma Shalizi, [http://bactra.org/notebooks/ashby.html W. Ross Ashby] web page, 1999.</ref>

=== 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.<ref>[http://www.ashby.info/journal/index.html W. Ross Ashby Journal (1928–1972)] The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive, 2008.</ref> Ashby initially considered his theorizing a private hobby, and his later decision to begin publishing his work caused him some distress. He wrote: <blockquote>
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.<ref name="Pickering Brain"/>{{rp|97}}
</blockquote>
Ashby found writing so difficult that he took correspondence courses in "Effective English and Personal Efficiency" to prepare to write his first book.<ref name="bio"/>

=== Adaptation ===
Ashby was interested in [[Mechanism (philosophy)|mechanistic]] explanations for adaptive behavior, especially in the [[brain]]. By 1941, he had developed a coherent theory and written a 197-page booklet, titled "The Origin of Adaptation".<ref name="Pickering Brain"/>{{rp|99}} This hand-written monograph was made publicly available in January 2021.<ref name="Ashby Origin">W.R. Ashby, "The Origin of Adaptation", 1941, British Library, London. Available online: [http://ashby.info/origins.html W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive], 2021.</ref> 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."<ref name="Ashby Origin"/>{{rp|35}}

In 1948 Ashby built a machine, the [[homeostat]], to demonstrate his theories.<ref name="Pickering Brain"/>{{rp|98}} The machine used a simple mechanical process to return to [[equilibrium point|equilibrium]] states after disturbances at its input. Earlier, in 1946, [[Alan Turing]] had written a letter<ref>[http://www.ashby.info/letters/turing.html Alan Turing letter] The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive, 2008.</ref> to Ashby suggesting that Ashby use Turing's [[Automatic Computing Engine]] (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".<ref>{{cite book
| last=Wiener
| first=Norbert
| title=The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society
| date=1954
}}</ref> 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]] of young [[psychologist]]s, [[physiology|physiologists]], [[mathematician]]s and [[engineer]]s who met to discuss issues in [[cybernetics]]. The club was founded in 1949 by the [[neurology|neurologist]] [[John Bates (neurologist)|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: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine|Cybernetics]]''. The book gave accounts of [[homeostasis]], [[adaptation]], [[memory]] and [[Foresight (psychology)|foresight]] in living organisms in Ashby's determinist, mechanist terms.<ref name="Lilienfeld Systems">{{cite book
| first=Robert
| last=Lilienfeld
| date=1978
| title=The Rise of Systems Theory: An Ideological Analysis
| publisher=John Wiley & Sons
| page=35
}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{cite journal
| last1      = Zwick
| first1     = Martin
| date       = 2004
| title      = An overview of reconstructability analysis
| url        = https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/37775158.pdf
| journal    = Kybernetes
| volume     = 33
| issue      = 5/6
| pages      = 877–905
| doi = 10.1108/03684920410533958
}}</ref><ref name="Klir Architecture">{{cite book
| last=Klir
| first=George
| date=1985
| publisher=Plenum Press
| location=New York
| title=Architecture of Systems Problem Solving
}}</ref>{{rp|287–288}}

In 1970, Ashby collaborated on simulation experiments regarding the stability of large interconnected systems.<ref>{{cite journal
| last1      = Gardner
| first1     = M. R.
| last2      = Ashby
| first2     = W. R.
| date       = 1970
| title      = Connectance of Large Dynamic (Cybernetic) Systems: Critical Values for Stability
| journal    = Nature
| volume     = 228
| issue = 5273
| pages      = 748
| doi        = 10.1038/228784a0
| pmid = 5472974
| bibcode = 1970Natur.228..784G
| s2cid = 4217071
| doi-access= free
}}</ref> This work inspired [[Robert May, Baron May of Oxford|Robert May]]'s studies of stability and complexity in model ecosystems.<ref name="May 1972">{{Cite journal|last=May|first=Robert M.|date=18 August 1972|title=Will a Large Complex System be Stable?|journal=Nature|language=en|volume=238|issue=5364|pages=413–414|doi=10.1038/238413a0|pmid=4559589|bibcode=1972Natur.238..413M|s2cid=4262204}}</ref>

=== Variety ===
In ''An Introduction to Cybernetics'', Ashby used set cardinality, or [[variety (cybernetics)|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".<ref>{{cite book
| last=George
| first=F.H.
| date=1971
| title=Cybernetics
| publisher=The English Universities Press Ltd
}}</ref> When regulation is seen as a game between a regulator <math>R</math> and source of disturbances <math>D</math>, "only variety in <math>R</math> can force down the variety due to <math>D</math>; ''only variety can destroy variety.''"<ref name="I2C">{{cite book
 |last=Ashby
 |first=William Ross
 |date=1956
 |title=An Introduction to Cybernetics
 |location=London
 | url=http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/books/IntroCyb.pdf
 |publisher=Chapman & Hall
}}</ref>{{rp|207}}

In work with Ashby, Conant augmented this with the "[[Good Regulator]] theorem" stating that "every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system".<ref>Roger C. Conant and W. Ross Ashby, "[http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Books/Conant_Ashby.pdf Every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system]", ''International Journal of Systems Science'' vol '''1''' (1970), 89–97.</ref> [[Stafford Beer]] applied the law of variety to the practice of management, founding [[management cybernetics]] and developing the [[Viable System Model]].<ref name="Beer Brain">{{cite book
 |last= Beer
 |first= Stafford
 |date=1981
 |title=Brain of the Firm, 2nd Edition
 |location=West Sussex
 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons
}}</ref>

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]].<ref>[http://www.cybsoc.org/ross.htm "What Ashby Says..."] Retrieved 16 May 2014.</ref>

== Legacy ==
The Papers of William Ross Ashby are housed at the [[British Library]]. The papers can be accessed through the British Library catalogue.<ref>[http://searcharchives.bl.uk/IAMS_VU2:IAMS032-003099590 William Ross Ashby Papers], archives and manuscripts catalogue, the British Library. Retrieved 02 June 2020</ref>

On 4–6 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 [[Stuart Kauffman]], [[Stephen Wolfram]] and [[George Klir]].<ref>[http://www.ashby.info/centenary.html W. Ross Ashby Centenary Conference] The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive, 2008</ref> 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 science|management studies]].<ref name="Beer Brain"/>

== Publications ==
;Books
* 1952. ''[https://archive.org/details/designforbrainor00ashb Design for a Brain]'', Chapman & Hall.
* 1956. ''[http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html An Introduction to Cybernetics]'', Chapman & Hall.
* 1981. Conant, Roger C. (ed.). ''[http://ashby.info/mechanisms.html Mechanisms of Intelligence: Ross Ashby's Writings on Cybernetics]'', 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 a [https://web.archive.org/web/20080515172118/http://emergence.org/ECO_site/ECO_Archive/Issue_6_1-2/Ashby.pdf PDF] in Emergence: Complexity and Organization (E:CO) Special Double Issue Vol. 6, Nos. 1–2 2004, pp.&nbsp;102–126.

== See also ==
{{Portal|Systems science}}
* [[Controllability]] and [[observability]]
* [[Ethical regulator theorem]]
* [[Intelligence amplification]]

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
* [[British Library]] Untold lives blog, 20 April 2016: ''[http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/untoldlives/2016/04/an-introduction-to-w-ross-ashby.html Pioneering cybernetics: an introduction to W Ross Ashby]''.
* Asaro, Peter (2008). ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20110727172116/http://peterasaro.org/writing/Asaro%20Ashby.pdf "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.

== External links ==
{{wikiquote}}
* [http://www.ashby.info/index.html The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive] includes an extensive biography, bibliography, letters, photographs, movies, and fully indexed images of all 7,189 pages of Ashby's 25 volume journal.
* [http://www.gwu.edu/~asc/biographies/ashby/ashby.html Homepage of William Ross Ashby] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160314143656/https://www.gwu.edu/~asc/biographies/ashby/ashby.html |date=14 March 2016 }} with a short text from the ''Encyclopædia Britannica Yearbook'' 1973, and some links.
*  Asaro, Peter M. (2008). [http://cybersophe.org/writing/Asaro%20Ashby.pdf "From Mechanisms of Adaptation to Intelligence Amplifiers: The Philosophy of W. Ross Ashby,"] in Michael Wheeler, Philip Husbands and Owen Holland (eds.) [https://web.archive.org/web/20100822150044/http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11479 The Mechanical Mind in History], Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, pp.&nbsp;149–184.
* [http://bactra.org/notebooks/ashby.html W. Ross Ashby] web page by [[Cosma Shalizi]], 1999.
* [http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html W. Ross Ashby (1956): ''An Introduction to Cybernetics'', (Chapman & Hall, London): available electronically], Principia Cybernetica Web, 1999
* [http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/reqvar.html The Law of Requisite Variety] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141008212057/http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/REQVAR.HTML |date=8 October 2014 }} in the [[Principia Cybernetica Web]], 2001.
* [http://www.cybsoc.org/ross.htm 159 Aphorisms from Ashby and further links at the Cybernetics Society]
* [http://www.panarchy.org/ashby/variety.1956.html W. Ross Ashby, Cybernetics and Requisite Variety] (1956) from ''An Introduction to Cybernetics''
* [http://www.panarchy.org/ashby/adaptation.1960.html W. Ross Ashby, Feedback, Adaptation and Stability] (1960) from ''Design for a Brain''
* {{YouTube|_hjAXkNbPfk|What is Cybernetics?}} Livas short introductory videos

{{Cybernetics}}
{{Systems}}
{{Society for General Systems Research Presidents}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ashby, William Ross}}
[[Category:1903 births]]
[[Category:1972 deaths]]
[[Category:Alumni of the Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital]]
[[Category:British artificial intelligence researchers]]
[[Category:Control theorists]]
[[Category:Cyberneticists]]
[[Category:English psychiatrists]]
[[Category:Medical doctors from London]]
[[Category:Systems psychologists]]
[[Category:Complex systems scientists]]
[[Category:Alumni of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge]]
[[Category:British systems scientists]]
[[Category:20th-century English medical doctors]]
[[Category:British Army personnel of World War II]]
[[Category:Royal Army Medical Corps officers]]
[[Category:Presidents of the International Society for the Systems Sciences]]
[[Category:Military personnel from London]]