Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Wikipedia-Article "Taxonomy"
Taxonomy (from Greek verb tassein = "to classify" and nomos = law, science, cf "economy") may refer to:
- the science of classification (see alpha taxonomy)
- a classification
Initially taxonomy was only the science of classifying living organisms, but later the word was applied in a wider sense, and may also refer to either a classification of things, or the principles underlying the classification. Almost anything, animate objects, inanimate objects, places, and events, may be classified according to some taxonomic scheme.
Taxonomy is a highly covered topic when discussing primates related to anthropology. There are many similarities that are between humans and apes that are evident in anatomy, brain structures, genetics, and biochemistry. The physical similarities between humans and apes are known as zoological taxonomy. Taxonomy is the organisms related to the resemblance of others. Take for instance humans and apes. "Humans and apes belong to the same taxonomic superfamily, hominoidea, also known as hominoids." Monkeys are not apart of this family, they are placed in two families known as ceboidea and cercopithecoidea."This means that humans and apes are more closely related to each other than either is to monkeys. Taxonomy also carries a subspecies category which would include the Neanderthals family. The comparison to the differences between monkey and humans would be the similar to the differences between homo sapiens and hominoids.
Taxonomies are frequently hierarchical in structure. However taxonomy may also refer to relationship schemes other than hierarchies, such as network structures. Other taxonomies may include single children with multi-parents, for example, "Car" might appear with both parents "Vehicle" and "Steel Mechanisms". A taxonomy might also be a simple organization of objects into groups, or even an alphabetical list. In current usage within "Knowledge Management", taxonomies are seen as slightly less broad than ontologies.
Mathematically, a hierarchical taxonomy is a tree structure of classifications for a given set of objects. 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 the Organism (as this applies to all living things, it is implied rather than stated explicitly). Below this are the Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species, with various other ranks sometimes inserted.
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. The theories of Kant and Durkheim also influenced Claude Lévi-Strauss, the founder of anthropological structuralism. Lévi-Strauss wrote two important books on taxonomies: Totemism and The Savage Mind.
Such taxonomies 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.
A recent 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.
The phrase enterprise taxonomy is used in business to describe a very limited form of taxonomy used only within one organization.
The field of solving or best-fitting of numerical equations that characterize all measurable quantities of a set of objects is called cluster analysis; this is a form of taxonomy called numerical taxonomy or taximetrics.
See also
- systematics
- scientific classification
- ontology
- Folksonomy
- Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Recognition, a fictional Chinese encyclopedia with an "impossible" taxonomic scheme.
- Phylocode, a controversial method to revise the naming system developed by Linnaeus
Kottak, Conrad. Window on Humanity
Wikipedia-Article "Nomenclature"
Nomenclature is a system of naming and categorizing objects in a given category.
Linnaeus popularized one of the best-known examples: he used binary names (e.g. in two parts, a process known as binomial nomenclature) to name species of minerals, vegetables, and animals. The names he coined for the last two categories were the start of present day botanical and zoological nomenclature, codified in the ICBN and ICZN. Other codes are also derived from these.
The combination of a genus name and a species descriptor serves to uniquely label each species of organism. For example, humankind is uniquely named by the name Homo sapiens. No other species of animal can have this name. In this way, every species is given a specific identifier that is accepted worldwide, transcending common names that are often neither unique nor consistent from place to place and language to language.
See also
In astronomy:
In biology:
- Nomenclature Codes
- International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN)
- International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN)
- International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria (ICNB)
In chemistry:
- International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC)
- IUPAC nomenclature, for chemical compounds
In Commerce:
The Russian expression nomenklatura (like "nomenclature", the word derives from the Latin nomenclatura — "name-calling") refers to a system of government patronage used in many countries under Communist rule.