W. Ross Ashby
1903–1972 · British psychiatrist and pioneer of cybernetics
William Ross Ashby (London, 1903 – Tockington, 1972) was a British psychiatrist and neurologist who became one of the pioneers of modern cybernetics, the study of control and communication in machines and living things. Often regarded as the main theorist of cybernetics after Norbert Wiener, he shaped ideas that still matter in systems theory and in the study of complex systems.
He studied medicine at Cambridge and worked as a clinical psychiatrist in London and as a research pathologist at St Andrew's Hospital in Northampton. He served in India during the Second World War, and later directed research at Barnwood House in Gloucester and the Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol. In 1960 he moved to the University of Illinois, where he taught until his retirement in 1970. He also presided over the Society for General Systems Research from 1962 to 1964.
His central insight is that a system can regulate itself only if its responses are as varied as the disturbances it faces. In 1948 he built the homeostat, an electromechanical device that returned to equilibrium after being disturbed. His books Design for a Brain (1952) and An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956) gave cybernetic thought a systematic form. His influence extends to management theory, theoretical ecology and the study of complexity.
Key ideas
- Homeostasis and adaptation: systems seek equilibrium and regain it through feedback when disturbed.
- Law of requisite variety: only variety in a regulator can counter the variety of the disturbances it receives.
- Adaptive machines: purposeful behaviour can be reproduced by self-regulating physical mechanisms, such as the homeostat.
- An abstract science of organisation: there are general laws of organisation that hold regardless of what is organised.
Curiosities
A journal of over forty years
Ashby kept a journal for more than forty-four years, recording his ideas about new theories. It fills 25 volumes totalling 7,189 pages.
A suggestion from Turing
In 1946 Alan Turing wrote to him suggesting he use the ACE computer for his experiments instead of building a special machine.
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