Ashby's law

The Law of Requisite Variety (Engl. Law of Requisite Variety ) is one of the central findings of cybernetics . It was first described by W. Ross Ashby formulated and therefore sometimes is Ashbysches Act (Engl. Ashby's Law ) called.

The law says that a system that controls another, the more disturbances in the control process can compensate, the greater its variety of actions . Another formulation is: The greater the variety of a system, the more it can reduce the variety of its environment through control.

Often the law is cited in the stronger formulation that the variety of the control system must be at least as great as the variety of the occurring disturbances so that it can carry out the control.

See also

• Thorngate's Postulate of Appropriate Complexity

literature

• WR Ashby: An introduction to Cybernetics. Wiley, New York 1956.

Web links

• The law of requisite variety (English)