Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification. The word finds its roots in the Greek Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical ancient Greek literature and the New Testament of τάξις, taxis (meaning 'order' or 'arrangement') and νόμος, nomos (meaning 'law' or 'science'). Taxonomy uses taxonomic units, known as taxa (singular taxon A taxon is a group of (one or more) organisms, which a taxonomist adjudges to be a unit. Usually a taxon is given a name and a rank, although neither is a requirement. Defining what belongs or does not belong to such a taxonomic group is done by a taxonomist. It is not uncommon for one taxonomist to disagree with another on what exactly belongs to).

In addition, the word is also used as a count noun In linguistics, a count noun is a common noun that can be modified by a numeral and occur in both singular and plural form, as well as co-occurring with quantificational determiners like every, each, several, etc. A mass noun has none of these properties. It can't be modified by a numeral, occur in singular/plural or co-occur with the relevant: a taxonomy, or taxonomic scheme, is a particular classification ("the taxonomy of ..."), arranged in a hierarchical A hierarchy (Greek: hierarchia , from hierarches, "leader of sacred rites") is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another and with only one "neighbor" above and below each of structure. Typically this is organized by supertype-subtype relationships, also called generalization-specialization relationships, or less formally, parent-child relationships. In such an inheritance relationship, the subtype by definition has the same properties, behaviors, and constraints as the supertype plus one or more additional properties, behaviors, or constraints. For example: car is a subtype of vehicle A vehicle is a device that is designed or used to transport people or cargo. Most often vehicles are manufactured (e.g. bicycles, cars, motorcycles, trains, ships, boats, and aircraft), so any car is also a vehicle, but not every vehicle is a car. Therefore a type needs to satisfy more constraints to be a car than to be a vehicle. Another example: any shirt is also a piece of clothing, but not every piece of clothing is a shirt. Hence, a type must satisfy more parameters to be a shirt than to be a piece of clothing.

Applications

Originally taxonomy referred only to the classifying of organisms (now sometimes known as alpha taxonomy Alpha taxonomy is the science of finding, describing and categorising organisms, thus leading to the recognition of proposed taxonomic groups, or taxa (singular: taxon), which may then be named) or a particular classification of organisms. However, it has become fashionable in certain circles to apply the term in a wider, more general sense, where it may refer to a classification of things or concepts, as well as to the principles underlying such a classification.

Almost anything—animate objects, inanimate objects, places, concepts, events, properties, and relationships—may then be classified according to some taxonomic scheme. Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 16 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site. Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales categories illustrate a taxonomy schema In the most general sense, a model is anything used in any way to represent anything else. Some models are physical objects, for instance, a toy model which may be assembled, and may even be made to work like the object it represents. However a conceptual model, may only be drawn on paper, described in words, or imagined in the mind. They are used^[1] and a full taxonomy of Wikipedia categories can be extracted by automatic means^[2]. Recently, it has been shown that a manually constructed taxonomy, such as that of computational lexicons like WordNet WordNet is a lexical database for the English language. It groups English words into sets of synonyms called synsets, provides short, general definitions, and records the various semantic relations between these synonym sets. The purpose is twofold: to produce a combination of dictionary and thesaurus that is more intuitively usable, and to, can be used to improve and restructure the Wikipedia category taxonomy^[3].

In an even wider sense, the term taxonomy could also be applied to relationship schemes other than parent-child hierarchies, such as network structures In graph theory, a network is a digraph with weighted edges. These networks have become an especially useful concept in analyzing the interaction between biology and mathematics. Using networks of all types; various applications based on the creativity of the mathematician along with their environment can be evaluated in all sorts of manners. Some with other types of relationships. Taxonomies may then include single children with multi-parents, for example, "Car" might appear with both parents "Vehicle" and "Steel Mechanisms"; to some however, this merely means that 'car' is a part of several different taxonomies.^[4] A taxonomy might also be a simple organization of kinds of things into groups, or even an alphabetical list. However, the term vocabulary is more appropriate for such a list. In current usage within Knowledge Management Knowledge management comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences. Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in organizational processes or practice, taxonomies are considered narrower than ontologies In computer science and information science, an ontology is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain since ontologies apply a larger variety of relation types.^[5]

Mathematically, a hierarchical taxonomy is a tree structure A tree structure is a way of representing the hierarchical nature of a structure in a graphical form. It is named a "tree structure" because the classic representation resembles a tree, even though the chart is generally upside down compared to an actual tree, with the "root" at the top and the "leaves" at the bottom of classifications for a given set of objects. It is also named Containment hierarchy A hierarchy (Greek: hierarchia , from hierarches, "leader of sacred rites") is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another and with only one "neighbor" above and below each. At the top of this structure is a single classification, the root node, that applies to all objects. Nodes below this root are more specific classifications that apply to subsets of the total set of classified objects. The progress of reasoning proceeds from the general to the more specific. In scientific taxonomies, a conflative term is always a polyseme Polysemy (from the Greek: πολυ-, poly-, "many" and σήμα, sêma, "sign") is the capacity for a sign (e.g., a word, phrase, etc.) or signs to have multiple meanings (sememes), i.e., a large semantic field. This is a pivotal concept within social sciences, such as media studies and linguistics.^[6]

In contrast, in a context of legal terminology, an open-ended contextual taxonomy—a taxonomy holding only with respect to a specific context. In scenarios taken from the legal domain, a formal account of the open-texture of legal terms is modeled, which suggests varying notions of the "core" and "penumbra" of the meanings of a concept. The progress of reasoning proceeds from the specific to the more general.^[7]

Taxonomy and mental classification

Some have argued that the adult human mind naturally organizes its knowledge of the world into such systems. This view is often based on the epistemology Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions: of Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg. Kant was the last influential philosopher of modern Europe in the classic sequence of the theory of knowledge during the Enlightenment beginning with thinkers John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. Anthropologists Cultural anthropology is one of four or five fields of anthropology . It is the branch of anthropology that examines culture as a meaningful scientific concept have observed that taxonomies are generally embedded in local cultural and social systems, and serve various social functions. Perhaps the most well-known and influential study of folk taxonomies is Émile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. A more recent treatment of folk taxonomies (including the results of several decades of empirical research) and the discussion of their relation to the scientific taxonomy can be found in Scott Atran's Cognitive Foundations of Natural History.

Various biological taxonomies

Biological classification Biological classification, or scientific classification in biology, is a method by which biologists group and categorize organisms by biological type, such as genus or species. Biological classification is a form of scientific taxonomy, but should be distinguished from folk taxonomy, which lacks scientific basis. Modern biological classification (sometimes known as "Linnaean taxonomy Linnaean taxonomy is a term for rank-based classification of organisms, in general. That is, taxonomy in the traditional sense of the word: rank-based scientific classification, This term is especially used as opposed to other ways of categorizing organisms, like cladistics and phenetics. It is attributed to Linnaeus, although he neither invented") is still generally the best known form of taxonomy. It differs from the above in that it is an empirical science, with classifying only the final step of a process, and a classification only the means to communicate the end results. It also includes the prediction, discovery, description and (re)defining of taxa. It uses taxonomic ranks, including, among others, (in order) Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species (various mnemonic devices have been used to help people remember the list of "Linnaean" taxonomic ranks. See Zoology mnemonic The mnemonic, King Penguins congregate on frozen ground sometimes has the first letter of each word of the mnemonic corresponding in order to the first letter of the descending order of scientific classification. Keep pond clean or frogs get sick is a phrase commonly used as a shorter alternative). In zoology, the nomenclature for the more important ranks (superfamily In biological classification, rank is the level in a taxonomic branched ordering of living things. The most specific level is species, the next most specific is genus, and then family, class, etc. Sometimes (but only rarely) the term "taxonomic category" is used and more often the term "rank" is used -- the ranking, or ordering, to subspecies Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, or a taxonomic unit in that rank (plural: subspecies). A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one), including the allowed number of ranks, is strictly regulated by the ICZN Code The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature is both a book containing (among others) a set of rules and recommendations on the formal naming of animals, and that set itself[citation needed]. Among zoologists (and in the book) it is often referred to simply as "the Code" (in mixed company, taxonomists refer to it as "the ICZN&, whereas there is more latitude for names at higher ranks. Taxonomy itself is never regulated, but is always the result of research in the scientific community. How researchers arrive at their taxa A taxon is a group of (one or more) organisms, which a taxonomist adjudges to be a unit. Usually a taxon is given a name and a rank, although neither is a requirement. Defining what belongs or does not belong to such a taxonomic group is done by a taxonomist. It is not uncommon for one taxonomist to disagree with another on what exactly belongs to varies; depending on the available data, and resources, methods vary from simple quantitative A quantitative attribute is one that exists in a range of magnitudes, and can therefore be measured. Measurements of any particular quantitative property are expressed as a specific quantity, referred to as a unit, multiplied by a number. Examples of physical quantities are distance, mass, and time. Many attributes in the social sciences, or qualitative The term qualitative data is used to describe certain types of information. This is the almost the converse of quantitative data, in which items are more precisely described data in terms of quantity and in which numerical values are used. However, data originally obtained as qualitative information about individual items may give rise to comparisons of striking features to elaborate computer analyses of large amounts of DNA sequence The primary structure of a biological molecule is the exact specification of its atomic composition and the chemical bonds connecting those atoms. As nucleic acids, e.g. DNA and RNA, are unbranched polymers, this is equivalent to specifying exact sequence of nucleotides that comprise the whole molecule. This sequence is written as a succession of data.

Phylogenetics

Today, the alternative to the traditional rank-based biological classification is phylogenetic systematics, which is postulating phylogenetic trees A phylogenetic tree or evolutionary tree is a branching diagram or "tree" showing the inferred evolutionary relationships among various biological species or other entities based upon similarities and differences in their physical and/or genetic characteristics. The taxa joined together in the tree are implied to have descended from a (trees of descent), rather than focusing on what taxa to delimit. The best-known form of this is cladistics Cladistics is a method of classifying species of organisms into groups called clades, which consist of 1) all the descendants of an ancestral organism and 2) the ancestor itself. For example, birds, dinosaurs, crocodiles, and all descendants of their most recent common ancestor form a clade. In the terms of biological systematics, a clade is a.

The results of cladistic analyses are often represented as cladograms. It is held by cladists that taxa (if recognized) must always correspond to clades A clade[note 1] is a group consisting of an organism and all its descendants. In the terms of biological systematics, a clade is a single "branch" on the "tree of life". The idea that such a "natural group" of organisms should be grouped together and given a taxonomic name is central to biological classification. In, united by apomorphies Cladistics is a method of classifying species of organisms into groups called clades, which consist of 1) all the descendants of an ancestral organism and 2) the ancestor itself. For example, birds, dinosaurs, crocodiles, and all descendants of their most recent common ancestor form a clade. In the terms of biological systematics, a clade is a (derived traits) which are discovered by a cladistic analysis. Some cladists^[who?] hold that clades are poorly expressed in rank-based hierarchies and support the PhyloCode The International Code of Phylogenetic Nomenclature, known as the PhyloCode for short, is a developing draft for a formal set of rules governing phylogenetic nomenclature. Its current version is specifically designed to regulate the naming of clades, leaving the governance of species names up to the rank-based codes, a proposed ruleswork for the formal naming of clades, based on the model of the ICZN, ICBN The International Code of Botanical Nomenclature is the set of rules and recommendations dealing with the formal botanical names that are given to plants. Its intent is that each taxonomic group ("taxon", plural "taxa") of plants has only one correct name that is accepted worldwide. The value of a scientific name is that it is etc. in rank-based nomenclature.

Numerical taxonomy

In numerical taxonomy Numerical taxonomy or Phenetics is a classification system in biological systematics. It aims to create a taxonomy using numeric algorithms like cluster analysis. The concept was first developed by Robert R. Sokal & Peter H.A. Sneath in 1963 and later elaborated by the same authors, numerical phenetics or taximetrics, the taxonomy is exclusively based on cluster analysis Cluster analysis or clustering is the assignment of a set of observations into subsets so that observations in the same cluster are similar in some sense. Clustering is a method of unsupervised learning, and a common technique for statistical data analysis used in many fields, including machine learning, data mining, pattern recognition, image and neighbor joining In bioinformatics, neighbor-joining is a bottom-up clustering method used for the construction of phylogenetic trees. Usually used for trees based on DNA or protein sequence data, the algorithm requires knowledge of the distance between each pair of taxa in the tree to best-fit numerical equations that characterize measurable traits of a number of organisms. It results in a measure of evolutionary "distance" between species. This method has been largely superseded by cladistic analyses today; it is liable to being misled by plesiomorphic In cladistics, a symplesiomorphy or symplesiomorphic character is a trait which is shared between two or more taxa, but which is also shared with other taxa which have an earlier last common ancestor with the taxa under consideration. They are therefore not an indication that the taxa be considered more closely related to each other than to the traits.

Non-scientific taxonomies

Other taxonomies, such as those analyzed by Durkheim David Émile Durkheim (April 15, 1858 – November 15, 1917) was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (French pronunciation: [klod levi stʁos]; was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called the "father of modern anthropology", are sometimes called folk taxonomies A folk taxonomy is a vernacular naming system, and can be contrasted with scientific taxonomy. Folk biological classification is the way peoples make sense of and organize their natural surroundings/the world around them, typically making generous use of form taxa like "shrubs", "bugs", "ducks", "ungulates" to distinguish them from scientific taxonomies that focus on evolutionary relationships rather than similarity in habitus In biology "morphology" is the study of the form, structure and configuration of an organism. This includes aspects of the outward appearance [citation needed] as well as the form and structure of the internal parts like bones and organs. This is in contrast to physiology, which deals primarily with function and habits. Though phenetics arguably places much emphasis on overall similarity, it is a quantitative analysis that attempts to reproduce evolutionary relationships of lineages and not similarities of form taxa In general taxonomy, it is a kind of wastebasket taxon, either a taxon that is not a natural group but united by shared plesiomorphies, or a presumably artificial group of organisms whose true relationships are not known, being obscured by ecomorphological similarity. Well-known form taxa of this kind include "ducks", "fish", &.

The neologism A neologism ; from Greek νέος (neos 'new') + λόγος (logos 'speech') is a newly coined word or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language. Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event. According to Oxford English folksonomy A folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content; this practice is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging.[citation needed] Folksonomy, a term coined by Thomas Vander Wal, is a should not be confused with "folk taxonomy", though it is obviously a portmanteau A portmanteau (pronounced /pɔrtmænˈtoʊ/ , plural: portmanteaus or portmanteaux) or portmanteau word is used to mean a blend of two (or more) words or morphemes and their meanings into one new word. In linguistics, a portmanteau is defined as a single morph which represents two or more morphemes created from the two words. "Fauxonomy" (from French faux, "false") is a pejorative Pejoratives are words or grammatical forms which denote a negative affect; that is, they express the contempt or distaste of the speaker. Sometimes a term may begin as a pejorative word and eventually be adopted in a non-pejorative sense. In historical linguistics, this phenomenon is known as melioration, or amelioration, or semantic change neologism A neologism ; from Greek νέος (neos 'new') + λόγος (logos 'speech') is a newly coined word or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language. Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event. According to Oxford English used to criticize folk taxonomies for their lack of agreement with scientific findings. Baraminology is a taxonomy used in creation science Creation Science or scientific creationism is a branch of creationism, which attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the history of the Earth, cosmology and biological evolution. Its most vocal which in classifying form taxa resembles folk taxonomies.

The phrase "enterprise taxonomy" is used in business to describe a very limited form of taxonomy used only within one organization. An example would be a certain method of classifying trees as "Type A", "Type B" and "Type C" used only by a certain lumber company for categorising log shipments.

Military taxonomy

Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz was a Prussian soldier and German military theorist who stressed the moral and political aspects of war. His most notable work, Vom Kriege (On War), was unfinished at his death stressed the significance of grasping the fundamentals of any situation in the "blink of an eye" (coup d'œil). In a military context the astute tactician can immediately grasp a range of implications and can begin to anticipate plausible and appropriate courses of action.^[8] Clausewitz' conceptual "blink" represents a tentative ontology which organizes a set of concepts within a domain.

The term "military taxonomy" encompasses the domains of weapons, equipment, organizations, strategies, and tactics.^[9] The use of taxonomies in the military extends beyond its value as an indexing tool or record-keeping template^[10] -- for example, the taxonomy-model analysis suggests a useful depiction of the spectrum of the use of military force in a political context.^[11]

A taxonomy of terms to describe various types of military operations is fundamentally affected by the way all elements are defined and addressed—not unlike framing. For example, in terms of a specific military operation, a taxonomic approach based on differentiation and categorization of the entities participating would produce results which were quite different from an approach based on functional objective of an operation (such as peacekeeping, disaster relief, or counter-terrorism).^[12]

Economic taxonomies

Taxonomies are also often used to classify economic activity, including products, companies and industries.

Widely used industrial taxonomies include the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC); national and regional taxonomies such as the United States Standard Industrial Classification (SIC), the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), Statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE), the United Kingdom Standard Industrial Classification of Economic Activities, the Russian Economic Activities Classification System (OKVED); and proprietary taxonomies such as the Industry Classification Benchmark and Global Industry Classification Standard. The international and national taxonomies are used by official statistical agencies. The proprietary taxonomies are often used in the financial services industry to group similar investment vehicles and to construct sectorial stock market indices.

Pavitt's Taxonomy classifies firms by their principal sources of innovation.

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