entropology

E1N1T1R1O1P3O1L1O1G2Y4

noun

The study of human actions that lead to the disintegration and increasing disorder of highly evolved social systems.

Scrabble 17

Meanings

nounentropology (uncountable)
  1. uncountableThe study of human actions that lead to the disintegration and increasing disorder of highly evolved social systems.

    Thus, anthropology is 'entropology', the science of the running down of things.

    2003, Wes Sharrock, John A Hughes, Peter J. Martin, Understanding Modern Sociology, →ISBN
    2 more examples

    Surely under such inclusive circumstances, the erstwhile frightening prospect of a grimly reductive "entropology" (Levi-Strauss, 1955:397) seems far less ominous.

    1974, Ino Rossi -, The unconscious in culture

    Both of these approaches began by challenging Lévi-Strauss's central conception of the relation of nature and culture, and of its role as the frame of his vision of anthropology as “entropology”, the reduction of culture to the status of an epiphenomenon of nature.

    2009, Terry S. Turner, “The crisis of late structuralism. Perspectivism and animism: rethinking culture, nature, spirit, and bodiliness”, in Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America, volume 7, number 1, page 10
  2. broadlyuncountableThe tendency of social systems to disintegrate.

    The poem thematizes more than it enacts entropology, a contemplation of materials in process over time.

    2018, Angela Hume, Gillian Osborne, Ecopoetics: Essays in the Field, →ISBN, page 83
    2 more examples

    The kind of agency I though I had—and the ethnocentric bias that led me to it—is symptomatic of the narrative motif of entropology. Make no mistake—entrolpology is real.

    2012, Kathleen Glenister Roberts, Alterity and Narrative, →ISBN, page 158

    In any case, the economic relationship between entropology and money in the last 250 years has to be studied in more scientific depth, but our methodical intuition points to an enigmatic monetary mechanism, concerning the entropy of our human economy.

    2013, Stephen I. Ternyik, Global Wave Energetics, →ISBN

Origin

Coined in 1955 by Claude Lévi-Strauss as Blend of entropy + anthropology

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

entropology. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/entropology

MLA

“entropology.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/entropology. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “entropology,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/entropology.

Source: entropology on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.