Classification of Life Scientists group each separate kind of organism into a species according to the binomial system of nomenclature,

which uses two Latin names to designate a separate type of organism. What is Scientific Classification? Scientific classification is how scientists catagorize animals. Why do we need scientific classification? In order to effectively study plants and animals, all scientists need to use the same names. Using the same names keeps scientists from getting confused about what species is being referred to. Our current day classification system was created by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeaus in 1757; this is what we refer to as Taxonomy. What is the Linnaean taxonomic system? The Linnaean taxonomic system is quite useful as a classification system. Not only does it provide official names for every plant and animal, it also helps scientists understand how objects are related to one another. The Linnaean system is based on a series of nested categories. Each Linnaean name is based on Latin and Greek root words which are often difficult to pronounce. People that are not scientists use common names. For example, the blues whale is known by two names: 1) Most people call them by their common name: "blue whale" while 2) Scientists use the blue whale's scientific name: Balaenoptera musculus. How does taxonomy relate to marine mammals? Marine mammals are animals that are warm-blooded with back bones that live in water. This information can also be discovered by looking at marine mammal taxonomic classifications. These classifications allow people to better understand how marine mammals are related to other animals. The chart below is a sample taxonomic chart for blue whales. and name plants and

Classification Kingdom

Blue Whale Example Animalia

Explanation
Whales belong to the kingdom Animalia because whales, have many cells,

Phylum

Chordata

Class

Mammalia

Order

Cetacea

[Suborder]

Mysticeti

Family

Balaenidae

Genus

Balaenoptera

Species

musculus

ingest food, and are formed from a "blastula" (from a fertilized egg). An animal from the phylum Chordata has a spinal cord and gill pouches. Whales and other mammals are warm blooded, have glands to provide milk for their off-spring, and have a four-chambered heart. Cetaceans are mammals live completely in the water. Whales that belong to the suborder Mysticeti have baleen plates (big filters in their mouths) rather than teeth. The family Balaenidae, also called rorqual whales. They have pleats around their throat that allow them to hold lots of water (which contains their food). A genus is a group of species that are more closely related to one another than any group in the family. Balaenoptera refers to the genus. A species is a grouping of individuals that interbreed successfully. The blue whale species name is musculus.

Answer : You could mention that his system was based on pattern of creation (God s plan for Nature). Groupings were based on shared traits, but similarities were unexplained. As with Aristotle s forms, Linnaeus's species were fixed, immutable, and composed of a single type. Extinction would mean God was displeased with the species. This was referred to as The Linnaean Paradigm. However, anomalies began to arise that question this paradigm. By 1800, many fossils had been found. Some very similar to extant forms, others without living counterparts. Why had so many species disappeared? Why were large

groups (like flowering plants) all built on the same basic plan? Why were geographic distributions of organisms non-random? Although there was no evolutionary relationship to the the Linnaean classification, his work would later be used by Darwin for evolutionary study, which of course eventually led to answers for the questions above.

Question : I need these for my homework and i cant find it. If you find one of aristotles theories and its long, please try to simplify the main theory in a sentecne but if not its okay,i'l do it myself. thanks! Answer : To Aristotle we can attribute the basis for an idea often called 'The Great Chain of Being.' Other names for the same idea are 'Ladder of Life' and 'Scala Naturae.' This was a try at the development of a kind of classification, or taxonomy. Aristotle was attempting to make sense of the relationships among living things. His idea was that all species could be placed in order, from the 'lowest' to the 'highest,' with worms on the bottom and you-know-who on the top. In Aristotle's view, the universe was ultimately perfect, and that meant that the Great Chain was also perfect. That meant that there were no empty links in the chain, and no link was represented by more than one species. and for contributions greek philosophers made to science, try this link http://www.crystalinks.com/greekscience.html Question : Need help with these questions! 1.from the days of the ancient Greeks, the study of logic has been mandatory in what two professions? 2. who developed a formal system of deductive logic based on arguements? 3. what was the name of the school Aristotle founded? What does it mean? 4. how did Aristotle's school of thought differ from Plato's?

Answer : Besides the obvious (Wikipedia), the other web site I'd recommend is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. That says, my guesses are: 1. Law has to be one of them. Maybe math for the other. 2. I think Aristotle. 3. No idea. 4. Aristotle at least purported to reason based on empirical observation. Plato engaged much more purely in theory. Classification of living thingsAristotle's classification of living things contains some elements which still existed in the 19th century. What the modern zoologist would call vertebrates and invertebrates, Aristotle called 'animals with blood' and 'animals without blood' (he was not to know that complex invertebrates do make use of haemoglobin, but of a different kind from vertebrates). Animals with blood were divided into live-bearing (humans and

mammals), and egg-bearing (birds and fish). Invertebrates ('animals without blood') are insects, crustacea (divided into non-shelled cephalopods and shelled) and testacea (molluscs). In some respects, this incomplete classification is better than that of Linnaeus, who crowded the invertebrata together into two groups, Insecta and Vermes (worms).

For Charles Singer, "Nothing is more remarkable than [Aristotle's] efforts to [exhibit] the relationships of living things as a scala naturae"[28] Aristotle's History of Animals classified organisms in relation to a hierarchical "Ladder of Life" (scala naturae), placing them according to complexity of structure and function so that higher organisms showed greater vitality and ability to move. [30] Aristotle believed that intellectual purposes, i.e., final causes, guided all natural processes. Such a teleological view gave Aristotle cause to justify his observed data as an expression of formal design. Noting that "no animal has, at the same time, both tusks and horns," and "a single-hooved animal with two horns I have never seen," Aristotle suggested that Nature, giving no animal both horns and tusks, was staving off vanity, and giving creatures faculties only to such a degree as they are necessary. Noting that ruminants had multiple stomachs and weak teeth, he supposed the first was to compensate for the latter, with Nature trying to preserve a type of balance.[31] In a similar fashion, Aristotle believed that creatures were arranged in a graded scale of perfection rising from plants on up to man, the scala naturae or Great Chain of Being.[32] His system had eleven grades, arranged according "to the degree to which they are infected with potentiality", expressed in their form at birth. The highest animals laid warm and wet creatures alive, the lowest bore theirs cold, dry, and in thick eggs. Aristotle also held that the level of a creature's perfection was reflected in its form, but not preordained by that form. Ideas like this, and his ideas about souls, are not regarded as science at all in modern times. He placed emphasis on the type(s) of soul an organism possessed, asserting that plants possess a vegetative soul, responsible for reproduction and growth, animals a vegetative and a sensitive soul, responsible for mobility and sensation, and humans a vegetative, a sensitive, and a rational soul, capable of thought and reflection.[33] Aristotle, in contrast to earlier philosophers, but in accordance with the Egyptians, placed the rational soul in the heart, rather than the brain.[34] Notable is Aristotle's division of sensation and thought, which generally went against previous philosophers, with the exception of Alcmaeon.[35]

Linnaean taxonomy 1. The particular classification (taxonomy) of Carl Linnaeus, as set forth in his Systema Natur (1735) and subsequent works. In the taxonomy of Linnaeus there are three kingdoms, divided into classes, and they, in turn, into orders, genera (singular: genus), and species (singular: species), with an additional rank lower than species. 2.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 cladistic systematics, which groups organisms into clades. It is attributed to Linnaeus, although he neither invented the concept of ranked classification (it goes back to Aristotle) nor gave it its present form. In fact, it does not have an exact present form, as "Linnaean taxonomy" as such does not really exist: it is a collective (abstracting) term for what actually are several separate fields, which use similar approaches. The same applies to "Linnaean name": depending on the context this may either be a formal name given by Linnaeus (personally), such as Giraffa camelopardalis Linnaeus, 1758, or a formal name in the accepted nomenclature (as opposed to a modernistic clade name).

Contents [hide] 1 The taxonomy of Linnaeus 1.1 For animals 1.2 For plants 1.3 For minerals 2 Rank-based scientific classification 2.1 The alternative 3 See also 4 Further reading 5 External links

[edit] The taxonomy of LinnaeusIn his Imperium Naturae, Linnaeus established three kingdoms, namely Regnum Animale, Regnum Vegetabile and Regnum Lapideum. This approach, the Animal, Vegetable and Mineral Kingdoms, survives today in the popular mind, notably in the form of the parlour game question: "Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?".

The work of Linnaeus had a huge impact on science; it was indispensable as a foundation for biological nomenclature, now regulated by the Nomenclature Codes. Two of his works, the first edition of the Species Plantarum (1753) for plants and the tenth edition of the Systema Naturae (1758), are accepted as among the starting points of nomenclature; his binomials (names for species) and his generic names take priority over those of others. However, the impact he had on science was not because of the value of his taxonomy. His taxonomy was not particularly notable, or was even a step backward compared to some of his contemporaries.[citation needed]

[edit] For animals The 1735 classification of animalsOnly in the Animal Kingdom is the higher taxonomy of Linnaeus still more or less recognizable and some of these names are still in use, but usually not quite for the same groups as used by Linnaeus. He divided the Animal Kingdom into six classes, in the tenth edition, of 1758, these were:

Classis 1. MAMMALIA Classis 2. AVES Classis 3. AMPHIBIA Classis 4. PISCES Classis 5. INSECTA Classis 6. VERMES [edit] For plantsHis orders and classes of plants, according to his Systema Sexuale, were never intended to represent natural groups (as opposed to his ordines naturales in his Philosophia Botanica) but only for use in identification. They were used in that sense well into the nineteenth century.

Key to the Sexual System (from the 10th, 1758, edition of the Systema Naturae)The Linnaean classes for plants, in the Sexual System, were:

Classis 1. MONANDRIA Classis 2. DIANDRIA Classis 3. TRIANDRIA Classis 4. TETRANDRIA Classis 5. PENTANDRIA Classis 6. HEXANDRIA Classis 7. HEPTANDRIA Classis 8. OCTANDRIA Classis 9. ENNEANDRIA Classis 10. DECANDRIA Classis 11. DODECANDRIA Classis 12. ICOSANDRIA Classis 13. POLYANDRIA Classis 14. DIDYNAMIA Classis 15. TETRADYNAMIA Classis 16. MONADELPHIA Classis 17. DIADELPHIA Classis 18. POLYADELPHIA Classis 19. SYNGENESIA Classis 20. GYNANDRIA Classis 21. MONOECIA Classis 22. DIOECIA Classis 23. POLYGAMIA

Classis 24. CRYPTOGAMIA [edit] For mineralsHis taxonomy of minerals has dropped long since from use. In the tenth edition, 1758, of the Systema Natur, the Linnaean classes were:

Classis 1. PETR Classis 2. MINER Classis 3. FOSSILIA Classis 4. VITAMENTRA [edit] Rank-based scientific classificationMain article: Biological classification This rank-based method of classifying living organisms was originally popularized by (and much later named for) Linnaeus, although it has changed considerably since his time. The greatest innovation of Linnaeus, and still the most important aspect of this system, is the general use of binomial nomenclature, the combination of a genus name and a second term, which together uniquely identify each species of organism. For example, the human species is uniquely identified by the name Homo sapiens. No other species of organism can have this same binomen (the technical term for a binomial in the case of animals). Prior to Linnaean taxonomy, animals were classified according to their mode of movement.

A strength of Linnaean taxonomy is that it can be used to organize the different kinds of living organisms, simply and practically. Every species can be given a unique (and, one hopes, stable) name, as compared with common names that are often neither unique nor consistent from place to place and language to language. This uniqueness and stability are, of course, a result of the acceptance by working systematists (biologists specializing in taxonomy), not merely of the binomial names themselves, but of the rules governing the use of these names, which are laid down in formal Nomenclature Codes.

Species can be placed in a ranked hierarchy, starting with either domains or kingdoms. Domains are divided into kingdoms. Kingdoms are divided into phyla (singular: phylum) for animals; the term division, used for plants and fungi, is equivalent to the rank of phylum (and the current International Code of Botanical Nomenclature allows the use of either term). Phyla (or divisions) are divided into classes, and they, in turn, into orders, families, genera (singular: genus), and species (singular: species). There are ranks below species: in

zoology, subspecies (but see form or morph); in botany, variety (varietas) and form (forma), etc.

Groups of organisms at any of these ranks are called taxa (singular: taxon) or taxonomic groups.

The Linnaean system has proven robust and it remains the only extant working classification system at present that enjoys universal scientific acceptance. However, although the number of ranks is unlimited, in practice any classification becomes more cumbersome the more ranks are added. Among the later subdivisions that have arisen are such entities as phyla, families, and tribes, as well as any number of ranks with prefixes (superfamilies, subfamilies, etc). The use of newer taxonomic tools such as cladistics and phylogenetic nomenclature has led to a different way of looking at evolution (expressed in many nested clades) and this sometimes leads to a desire for more ranks.

[edit] The alternativeOver time, the understanding of the relationships between living things has changed. Linnaeus could only base his scheme on the structural similarities of the different organisms. The greatest change was the widespread acceptance of evolution as the mechanism of biological diversity and species formation, following the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. It then became generally understood that classifications ought to reflect the phylogeny of organisms, their descent by evolution. This lead to evolutionary taxonomy, where the various extant and extinct are linked together to construct a phylogeny. This is largely what is meant by the term 'Linnaean taxonomy' when used in a modern context.

In cladistics, originating in the work of Willi Hennig, 1950 onwards, each taxon is grouped so as to include the common ancestor of the group's members (and thus to avoid polyphyly). Such taxa may be either monophyletic (including all descendants) such as genus Homo, or paraphyletic (excluding some descendants), such as genus Australopithecus.

Originally, Linnaeus established three kingdoms in his scheme, namely for Plants, Animals and an additional group for minerals, which has long since been abandoned. Since then, various life forms have been moved into three new kingdoms: Monera, for prokaryotes (i.e., bacteria); Protista, for protozoans and

most algae; and Fungi. This five kingdom scheme is still far from the phylogenetic ideal and has largely been supplanted in modern taxonomic work by a division into three domains: Bacteria and Archaea, which contain the prokaryotes, and Eukaryota, comprising the remaining forms. These arrangements should not be seen as definitive. They are based on the genomes of the organisms; as knowledge on this increases, so will classifications change.

Representing presumptive evolutionary relationships, especially given the wide acceptance of cladistic methodology and numerous molecular phylogenies that have challenged long-accepted classifications, within the framework of Linnaean taxonomy, is sometimes seen as problematic[by whom?]. Therefore, some systematists[who?] have proposed a PhyloCode to replace it. DichotomyFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search

An example of a dichotomy is the partition of a scene into figure and ground the letters are foreground or figure; the rest is the background. Look up dichotomy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A dichotomy is any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts, meaning it is a procedure in which a whole is divided into two parts, or in half. It is a partition of a whole (or a set) into two parts (subsets) that are:

jointly exhaustive: everything must belong to one part or the other, and mutually exclusive: nothing can belong simultaneously to both parts. The two parts thus formed are complements. In logic, the partitions are opposites if there exists a proposition such that it holds over one and not the other.

In the community of philosophers and scholars, many believe that "unless a distinction can be made rigorous and precise it isn't really a distinction."[1]

Contents [hide]

1 Etymology 2 Usage 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit] EtymologyThe term comes from the Greek dichotomia (divided): dich(form of dcha, in two, asunder); tomia- a combining form meaning cutting, incision, excision of an object.

[edit] UsageThe above applies directly when the term is used in mathematics, philosophy, literature, or linguistics. For example, if there is a concept A, and it is split into parts B and not-B, then the parts form a dichotomy: they are mutually exclusive, since no part of B is contained in not-B and vice-versa, and they are jointly exhaustive, since they cover all of A, and together again give A. A false dichotomy is a logical fallacy consisting of a supposed dichotomy which fails one or both of the conditions: it is not jointly exhaustive or not mutually exclusive. In its most common form, two entities are presented as if they are exhaustive, when in fact other alternatives are possible. In some cases, they may be presented as if they are mutually exclusive although there is a broad middle ground (see also undistributed middle). Perceived Dichotomies are common in Western thought. C.P. Snow believes that Western society has become an argument culture (The Two Cultures). In The Argument Culture (1998), Deborah Tannen suggests that the dialogue of Western culture is characterized by a warlike atmosphere in which the winning side has truth (like a trophy). In such a dialogue, the middle alternatives are virtually ignored. In statistics, dichotomy may be the distinction of measurements into two groups in an ordinal scale, e.g. a "good" and a "bad" group. In economics, the classical dichotomy is the division between the real side of the economy and the monetary side. According to the classical dichotomy, changes in monetary variables do not affect real values as output, employment, and the real interest rate. Money is therefore neutral in the sense that it cannot affect these real variables. In set theory, a dichotomous relation R is such that either aRb, bRa or both.

In biology, a dichotomy is a division of organisms into two groups, typically based on a characteristic present in one group and absent in the other. Such dichotomies are used as part of the process of identifying species, as part of a dichotomous key, which asks a series of questions, each of which narrows down the set of organisms. A well known dichotomy is the question "does it have a backbone?" used to divide species into vertebrates and invertebrates. In botany, a dichotomy is a mode of branching by repeated bifurcation. Thus a focus on branching rather than division. In computer science, more specifically programming language engineering, the term dichotomy is used to denote fundamental dualities in a language's design. For instance, C++ has a dichotomy in its memory model (heap versus stack), whereas Java has a dichotomy in its type system (references versus primitive data types). In the anthropological field of theology and in philosophy, dichotomy is the belief that humans consist of a soul and a body. (See Mind-body dichotomy) This stands in contrast to trichotomy. Dichotomy is also a method of execution wherein the victim is cut in two. [citation needed] Divine Dichotomy as mentioned in the Conversations With God series of books by religious author Neale Donald Walsch. In Astronomy it is the phase of the moon or an inferior planet in which half its disk appears illuminated In sociology and semiotics, dichotomies (also sometimes called 'binaries' and/or 'binarisms') are the subject of attention because they may form the basis to divisions and inequality. For example, the Domestic-public dichotomy divides men's and women's roles in a society; the East-West dichotomy contrasts the Orient and the Occident. Some social scientists attempt to deconstruct dichotomies in order to address the divisions and inequalities they create: for instance Judith Butler's deconstruction of the gender-dichotomy and Val Plumwood's deconstruction of the human-environment dichotomy. The I Ching and taijitu represent the yin yang theories of traditional Chinese culture. In the classification of mental disorders in psychiatry or clinical psychology, dichotomous classification or categorization refers to the use of cut-offs intended to separate disorder from non-disorder at some level of abnormality, severity or disability.

In Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, a treatment shown to have some success in treating some clients with Borderline Personality Disorder, an essential tool used is based on the idea of dichotomy. Dichotomy, in this aspect, is a selfdefeating behavior using "all-or-nothing" or "black-and-white" thinking. The therapy teaches the patient how to change the dichotomy to a more "dialectical" (or "seeing the middle ground") way of thinking.

TaxonomyFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search For the science of classifying living things, see biological classification and alpha taxonomy. Look up taxonomy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification. The word finds its roots in the Greek , taxis (meaning 'order' or 'arrangement') and , nomos (meaning 'law' or 'science'). Taxonomy uses taxonomic units, known as taxa (singular taxon).

In addition, the word is also used as a count noun: a taxonomy, or taxonomic scheme, is a particular classification ("the taxonomy of ..."), arranged in a hierarchical 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, 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.

Contents [hide] 1 Applications 2 Taxonomy and mental classification 3 Various biological taxonomies

3.1 Phylogenetics 3.2 Numerical taxonomy 4 Non-scientific taxonomies 5 Military taxonomy 6 Economic taxonomies 7 Safety taxonomies 8 Notes 9 See also 10 References 11 External links

[edit] ApplicationsOriginally taxonomy referred only to the classifying of organisms (now sometimes known as alpha taxonomy) or a particular classification of organisms. It is also used to refer a classification of things or concepts, as well as to the principles underlying such a classification.

Almost anythinganimate objects, inanimate objects, places, concepts, events, properties, and relationshipsmay then be classified according to some taxonomic scheme. Wikipedia categories illustrate a taxonomy schema,[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, can be used to improve and restructure the Wikipedia category taxonomy.[3]

The term taxonomy is sometimes applied to relationship schemes other than parent-child hierarchies, such as network structures with other types of relationships. In that case, they might include single children with multiparents, for example, "Car" might appear with both parents "Vehicle" and "Steel Mechanisms"; technically, 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, taxonomies are considered narrower than ontologies since ontologies apply a larger variety of relation types.[5]

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. The progress of reasoning proceeds from the general to the more specific. In scientific taxonomies, a conflative term is always a polyseme.[6]

In contrast, in a context of legal terminology, an open-ended contextual taxonomya 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]

[edit] Taxonomy and mental classificationSome 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 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 mile 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

[edit] Various biological taxonomiesBiological classification (sometimes known as "Linnaean taxonomy") 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). In zoology, the nomenclature for the more important ranks (superfamily to subspecies), including the allowed number of ranks, is strictly regulated by the ICZN Code, 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 varies; depending on the available data, and resources, methods vary from simple quantitative or qualitative comparisons of striking features to elaborate computer analyses of large amounts of DNA sequence data.

[edit] PhylogeneticsToday, the alternative to the traditional rank-based biological classification is phylogenetic systematics, which is postulating phylogenetic trees (trees of descent), rather than focusing on what taxa to delimit. The best-known form of this is cladistics.

The results of cladistic analyses are often represented as cladograms. It is held by cladists that taxa (if recognized) must always correspond to clades, united by apomorphies (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, a proposed ruleswork for the formal naming of clades, based on the model of the ICZN, ICBN etc. in rank-based nomenclature.

[edit] Numerical taxonomyIn numerical taxonomy, numerical phenetics or taximetrics, the taxonomy is exclusively based on cluster analysis and neighbor joining 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 traits.

[edit] Non-scientific taxonomiesOther taxonomies, such as those analyzed by Durkheim and Lvi-Strauss, are sometimes called folk taxonomies to distinguish them from scientific taxonomies that focus on evolutionary relationships rather than similarity in habitus 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.

The neologism folksonomy should not be confused with "folk taxonomy", though it is obviously a portmanteau created from the two words. "Fauxonomy" (from French faux, "false") is a pejorative neologism used to criticize folk

taxonomies for their lack of agreement with scientific findings. Baraminology is a taxonomy used in creation science 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.

[edit] Military taxonomyMilitary theorist Carl von Clausewitz stressed the significance of grasping the fundamentals of any situation in the "blink of an eye" (coup d'il). 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]

[edit] Economic taxonomiesMain article: Industry taxonomy Taxonomies are also often used to classify economic activity, including products, companies and industries.

Widely used industry 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.

[edit] Safety taxonomiesThe creation of taxonomies is very important in safety science. For example there exist numerous taxonomies to classify and analyze human error and accident causes. Examples of these include the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System based on Reason's Swiss Cheese Model, the CREAM (Cognitive Reliability Error Analysis Method), the taxonomy used by CIRAS (Confidential Incident Railway Analysis System) in the UK rail industry, and others.[13]