Syntropy

Syntropy is a term popularized by Buckminster Fuller but also developed by others to refer to an "anti-entropy" or "negentropy". The following definition, referencing Fuller, can be found on a web site on "Whole Systems": "A tendency towards order and symmetrical combinations, designs of ever more advantageous and orderly patterns. Evolutionary cooperation. Anti-entropy." Fuller's use dates to 1956. Also, see Fuller's Synergetics, chapter on "Radiation and Gravity," "Local Conservation and Cosmic Regeneration", sections 541.16 through 541.18.

Others who have contributed important ideas include Luigi Fantappié, Italian mathematician, who apparently coined the term syntropy in 1942, published in 1944, describing a unified theory of the physical and biological world. His ideas incorporated general systems theory ideas from Ludwig von Bertalanffy on negentropy and from Ilya Prigogine on the thermodynamics of dissipative systems. Richard Feynman "and Fantappié (1949) showed that syntropy inverts the arrow of time, and lets information move from the future to the past." 

Nobel Prize winner Albert Szent-Györgyi apparently proposed to replace the term negentropy with syntropy in 1974. His ideas are explained in some depth at a "Creation Science" website, although he was not an advocate. Szent-Györgyi's use of the term has been said to date to 1920, although this has not been verified.

There is "an open access journal" Syntropy "dedicated to the study of syntropy in the fields of psychology, sociology, economics, ecology and spirituality" which can be found in English at http://www.sintropia.it/english/.

In a commercial application, the term "Syntropy" is a second-generation object-oriented analysis and software design method developed at Object Designers Limited in the UK during the early 1990s. The goal in developing Syntropy was to provide a set of modelling techniques that would allow precise specification and would keep separate different areas of concern. The approach was to take established techniques, as found in methods such as the Object-modeling technique and Booch, and reposition and refine them. In recognition that graphical notations were much favoured by the market but lacked rigour, Syntropy adopted ideas from formal specification languages, specifically Z notation, to provide tools for both precise definition of the graphical notations and for the construction of richer models than are possible with pictures alone.

Although development on the Syntropy method stopped some years ago, many of its ideas were subsequently incorporated in the Unified Modeling Language, in the Catalysis software design method, and in other development processes. In particular, Syntropy is a direct ancestor of the Object Constraint Language that forms an integral part of the Unified Modeling Language.

Related Concepts

 * Model-driven architecture (MDA is an OMG Trademark), (MDE is not an OMG Trademark)
 * OCL
 * Object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD)