(1903 - 1972)
Past president of the Society for General Systems Research (now the International Society for the Systems Sciences), 1962, 1963 and 1964.
Ashby took the collected ideas of Wiener and others from the Macy Group (such as Bateson), together with those of James Clerk Maxwell (the Demon and the Black Box) and stripped them down to produce the most fundamental and abstracted systematisation of the cybernetic message. He applied this understanding to both the human brain, and to limits to the possible. His Law of Requisite Variety is perhaps the most general cybernetic law yet arrived at.
See an essay W Ross Ashby by George J Klir, contributed in 2003.
In addition, see an essay W Ross Ashby by Roger Conant, contributed in 2002.
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