W. Ross Ashby on Philosophy

"Two main lines are readily distinguished. One already well developed in the hands of von Bertalanffy and his co-workers, takes the world as we find it, examines the various systems that occur in it - zoological, physiological, and so on - and then draws up statements about the regularities that have been observed to hold. This method is essentially empirical. The second method is to start at the other end. Instead of studying first one system, then a second, then a third, and so on, it goes to the other extreme, considers the set of all conceivable systems and then reduces the set to a more reasonable size. This is the method I have recently followed."

"The primary fact is that all isolated state-determined dynamic systems are selective: from whatever state they have initially, they go towards states of equilibrium. These states of equilibrium are always characterised, in their relation to the change-inducing laws of the system, by being exceptionally resistant."

"Duration of selection. At this point a word should be said about how long a given act of selection may take, for when actual cases are examined, the time taken may, at first estimate, seem too long for any practical achievement. The question becomes specially important when the regulator is to be developed for regulation of a very large system. Approximate calculation of the amount of selection likely to be necessary may suggest that it will take a time far surpassing the cosmological; and one may jump to the conclusion that the time taken in actually achieving the selection would have to be equally long. This is far from being the case, however."