Word.ws English Dictionary

Ashby's Law

Ashby's Law is the alternative letter-case form of Ashby's law.

Proper noun capitalized: Ashby's law

Ashby's law

  1. To control variety externally, you must be able to control even more variety internally.
    • His "Law" of Requisite Variety stated that for a system to be stable, the number of states that its control mechanism is capable of attaining (its variety) must be greater than or equal to the number of states in the system being controlled.(Can we date this quote?), (Please provide the book title or journal name)

Forms of Ashby's Law

alternative formAshby's Law
alternative formlaw of requisite variety
alternative formlaw of requisite complexity

Origin of Ashby's Law

Originally formulated by the cyberneticist W. Ross Ashby in 1956.

Questions about Ashby's Law

What does Ashby's Law mean?
Ashby's Law means to control variety externally, you must be able to control even more variety internally.
What is Ashby's Law the alternative letter-case form of?
Ashby's Law is the alternative letter-case form of Ashby's law.
What part of speech is Ashby's Law?
Ashby's Law is a proper noun.

Words near Ashby's Law in the dictionary

  1. Ashby Magna
  2. Ashby plot
  3. Ashby plots
  4. Ashby St Ledgers
  5. Ashby Woulds
  6. Ashby's Law
  7. Ashby-de-la-Zouch
  8. Ashbyan
  9. ashcake
  10. ashcakes
  11. ashcan

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Ashby's Law (page history and authors); Ashby's law (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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