"Ectropy"

The word "ectropy" means a general increase in organization. It appears to have been developed by Willard V. Quine in response to the Twenty-first Anniversary Symposium of the Council for Unified Research and Education in 1969. Specifically, the term is described:

"This term was suggested by W. V. Quine in discussions following this symposium: Entropy, he pointed out, is Greek for turning in; the opposite term should therefore be the Greek for turning out, namely ectropy. Since the coaction cardioid literally turns in and out of the circle of reference, his short, elegant term is used throughout."

The above quotation appears on page 83 of the following source:

Edward Haskell (1972). "Generalization of the structure of Mendeleev's periodic table," In E. Haskell (Ed.), Full Circle: The Moral Force of Unified Science chapter 2, (pp. 21-90). New York: Gordon and Breach.

That book is an expansion of the aforementioned 1969 symposium. The term "ectropy" is used in several places in the book and is contrasted not only with "entropy" but also with the coined term, "atropy," which is used to describe circumstances in which the degree of organization remains constant.