Category Archives: Ashby

Our venture into cybernetics, the study of systems whose time evolution signifies an object, brings us to the point of seeing how pragmatic, semiotic, and systems thinking all have triadic relations at their core. Recall the game between and determined by … Continue reading →

Ashby now invites us to consider a series of games, beginning as follows. Requisite Variety 11/3.   Play and outcome.  Let us therefore forget all about regulation and simply suppose that we are watching two players, and who are engaged … Continue reading →

Ashby now takes a few steps back from the picture of regulation in biological systems, setting out the framework he needs for a broader perspective on regulation in general. Requisite Variety 11/1.   In the previous chapter we considered regulation … Continue reading →

Regulation In Biological Systems Survival 10/7.[concl.]   When considering this second form [of defence] we should be careful to notice the part played by information and variety in the process.  The fencer must watch his opponent closely, and he must gain … Continue reading →

Studies of intelligent systems, natural or artificial, tend to focus on dynamic models or symbolic models, rarely both, finding it difficult to integrate the two.  But here we are asking the synthetic question — How does a cybernetic system come … Continue reading →

Re: Systems Science (1) (2) • Jack Ring JR: I share your appreciation of Ashby’s work.  However it seems to reflect the deductive approach typical of males as contrasted to the inductive approach typical of females.  Make sense? A tutorial … Continue reading →

Re: Cybernetics • Faisal L. Kadri Maybe it will help to say a few things about the way forward … I’ll be getting back to Ashby’s text directly — it’s still the best guide I’ve found to the rudiments of … Continue reading →

We want to understand how a species of organisms might evolve:  (1) organic means of storing formal structures capable of bearing information about an organism’s state in the world, and (2) faculties for developing artificial extensions of those means.  Keeping that goal … Continue reading →

Re: Systems Science • Jack Ring In the last selection we found Ashby making what may strike us initially as a surprising inference.  Starting from the assumption that “an essential function of as a regulator is that it shall block … Continue reading →

Let’s pick up the observation Ashby made at the end of the last selection, regarding the job of a regulator, and continue with his text from there. Regulation In Biological Systems Survival 10/6.[cont.]   If is a regulator, the insertion … Continue reading →