Taxonomy

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For the science of classifying living things, see alpha taxonomy.

Look up taxonomy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification. The word comes from
the Greek τάξις, taxis, 'order' + νόμος, nomos, 'law' or 'science'. Taxonomies,
or taxonomic schemes, are composed of taxonomic units known as taxa
(singular taxon), or kinds of things that are arranged frequently in a
hierarchical structure, typically related by subtype-supertype relationships,
also called parent-child relationships. In such a subtype-supertype
relationship the subtype kind of thing has by definition the same
constraints as the supertype kind of thing, plus one or more additional
constraints.

For example, car is a subtype of vehicle. So any car is also a vehicle, but
not every vehicle is a car. Therefore, a thing needs to satisfy more
constraints to be a car than to be a vehicle.

Applications
Originally the term taxonomy referred to the classifying of living organisms like
cats(now known as alpha taxonomy); however, the term is now applied in a
wider, more general sense and now may refer to a classification of things, as
well as to the principles underlying such a classification.

Almost anything — animate objects, inanimate objects, places, concepts,

events, properties, and relationships — may be classified according to some
taxonomic scheme.
The term taxonomy may also apply to relationship schemes other than parent-
child hierarchies, such as network structures with other types of relationships.
taxonomies may 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.

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", taxonomies
are seen as less broad than ontologies as ontologies apply a larger variety of
relation types.

Mathematically, a hierarchical taxonomy is a tree structure of classifications

for a given set of objects. It is also named Containment hierarchy. 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. So for instance, in common schemes of
scientific classification of organisms, the root is called "Organism" followed by
nodes for the taxonomic ranks: Domain, kingdom, phylum, class, etc.

Taxonomy and mental classification

Some have argued that the human mind naturally organizes its knowledge of
the world into such systems. This view is often based on the epistemology of
Immanuel Kant. Anthropologists 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.

Various taxonomies
In phylogenetic taxonomy (or cladistic taxonomy), organisms can be
classified by clades, which are based on evolutionary grouping by ancestral
traits. By using clades as the criteria for separation, cladistic taxonomy, using
cladograms, can categorize taxa into unranked groups.
In numerical taxonomy or taximetrics, the field of solving or best-fitting of
numerical equations that characterize all measurable quantities of a set of
objects is called cluster analysis.

Non-scientific taxonomy
Other taxonomies, such as those analyzed by Durkheim and Lévi-Strauss, are
sometimes called folk taxonomies to distinguish them from scientific
taxonomies that claim to be disembedded from social relations and thus
objective and universal.
The neologism folksonomy should not be confused with "folk taxonomy"
(though it is obviously a contraction of the two words). Those who support
scientific taxonomies have recently criticized folksonomies by dubbing them
"fauxonomies" (French word "faux" means "false").
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.

See also
 Bloom's Taxonomy
 Carolus Linnaeus, the father of systematics
  Categorization
 Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Recognition, a fictional Chinese
encyclopedia with an "impossible" taxonomic scheme.
 Cladistics, the most prominent of several forms of phylogenetic
systematics
 Folksonomy
 Gellish English dictionary / Taxonomy, in which the concepts are
arranged as a subtype-supertype hierarchy.
 History of plant systematics
 Hypernym
 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
 Knowledge representation
 Linnaean taxonomy
 Nosology
 Phylogenetic Carl Woese demonstrates a new Taxon method to show
evolution via chromosomal methods.
 Ontology
 Scientific classification
 SOLO Taxonomy
 Species problem
 Systematics

External links
 Hjørland: Scientific classification and taxonomy. IN: The epistemological
Lifeboat
 Utter freedom via tagging and social constructs
 Wikispecies Main Page
 Integrated Taxonomic Information System
 Taxonomy Browser of National Center for Biotechnology Information
 Library of Taxonomy Resources
 Metadata? Thesauri? Taxonomies? Topic Maps! - Making sense of it all