The Status of Requisite Variety

Abstract

Ashby's concept of requisite variety is not a generally applicable law but a limited tautology. Attempts to regard it as an empirical truth ignore a wide class of contradictory phenomena and may cause options to be missed in designing effective controllers. However, the concept does provide one strategy among others, which may be applicable in certain specific control situations.

Citation

Dewhurst, D. (1991), "The Status of Requisite Variety", Kybernetes, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 61-64. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb005883