Taxonomy Gr taxis- order, nomos- law or science

The conception, naming, and classification of organism

groups. The exact relationship of systematics and
classification to taxonomy also varies because the usage of
the terms in biology originated independently.
Some recent definitions of taxonomy :
Theory and practice of grouping individuals into species,
arranging species into larger groups, and giving those
groups names, thus producing a classification;
A field of science (and major component of systematics)
that encompasses description, identification,
nomenclature, and classification.

Systematics: "The study of the identification, taxonomy

and nomenclature of organisms, including the
classification of living things with regard to their natural
relationships and the study of variation and the evolution
of taxa".

The History of Taxonomy

Historically, scientists have reformed the classification of
living things as new discoveries have been made. As these
explorers discovered new living organisms, their
classification system, known as taxonomy, grew in
complexity. Biologists, botanists, zoologists and other
researchers sought methods to simplify the process of
identification and classification for their studies. Taxonomy
is a system scientists use to classify and note the
similarities and difference between classes of living things.
The history of taxonomy dates back to the origin of
human language. Western scientific taxonomy started in
Greek some hundred years BC.

Pre-Linnaean Taxonomy
Ancient and Medieval Classifications

Aristotle (384-322 BC) divided organisms into two types:

plants and animals. He developed a systematic classification
system that identified different kinds of plants and animals.
Theophrastus (370-285 BC) developed the first
classification system for plants, later known as the plant
kingdom. He wrote a classification of all known plants, De
Historia Plantarum, which contained 480 species.
Discoroides (40-90 AD) wrote De Materia Medica, which
contained around 600 medicinal plant species.
Albertus Magnus was an advocate for the collaboration of
science and religion. His system of classification divided
dicots and monocots. Monocots are flowers that exhibit
one single cotyledon, a part of the embryo in a plant seed,
and dicots possess two cotyledons.

16th and 17th Centuries

Otto Brunfels, a German botanist, publicized his own
descriptions of plants and the characteristics that made each
plant organism unique.
Jrme Bock, German botanist and Lutheran priest, classified
700 plants according to their medicinal purposes. He also
published a manuscript that described the appearances of plants.
Italian botanist Andrea Cesalpino categorized plants according to
their differences in internal structure or organs.
In the 17th century, Swiss botanist Caspar Bauhin coined the
terms genus and species, which were later explored in detail by
Carl Linnaeus. Bauhin also created what appeared to be two-part
names, which elicited Linnaeus's idea of binomial nomenclature
to describe specific species. Bauhin was first to coin "species" as
a classification of scientific taxonomy.

Linnaean Era
18th Century
Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist Carl
Linnaeus (1707-1778) was the most revered
botanist of his time. He simplified the
classification system by imparting a two-part
naming system, called binomial nomenclature,
to make identification easier. His two works
are regarded as the starting points of modern
botanical and zoological taxonomy: the global
flora Species Plantarum (1753) and tenth edition
of Systema Naturae (1758) including global
fauna.

Post-Linnaean Taxonomy

Michel Adanson (1727-1806), a French

naturalist, classed plants according to the
individual workings of an organ. Plants
with similar organs were grouped
together in a division. His work was
carried forward by other taxonomists.

 Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, a French botanist

from Geneva, coined the word "taxonomy," and
categorized each species according to ecology,
evolution and bio-geography. This gave a
comprehensive view of the origins of the seed
varieties among plant life.
The first books on botany, "A Synopsis of British
Flora, Arranged According to the Natural Order" and
"An Introduction to the Natural System of Botany,"
were published by John Lindley.
Adolphe-Thodore Brongniart explored fossilized
plants, and is known as the Father of Paleobotany.
George Bentham, a gifted botanist from Portsmouth,
England, performed extensive exploration in Hong
Kong and China. His published work, "Genera
Plantarum," included a vast list of flora he discovered.

 Two Polish botanists, Heinrich Gustav Adolf Engler and

Karl Anton Eugen, created the phylum classification of
taxonomy. They arranged flowers based on form and
structure.
The "Bessey system," named after Ohio-born botanist
Charles E. Bessey, explores the evolution of organisms that
formed entire new species of life. This discovery entailed
146 families.
J. Hutchinson, a botanist from Northumberland, England,
utilized the "Hutchinson system," which traces the origins
of organisms that evolved into the diversity of life we see
today. This process is called phylogeny. His system included
328 families.
Armen Leonovich, Russian botanist, narrowed the
taxonomic process of identification to just divisions or
phylums with subclasses underneath. His system focuses
less on orders and families.

The Importance Of Biological Classification

Classification systems serve four very important roles.
An aid to memory. It is impossible to remember the characteristics
of a large number of different things unless we can group them
into categories, whose members share many characteristics.
Improve our predictive powers. If, for example, we know that
females of all known mammalian species have mammary glands
with which they produce milk for their offspring, we can be
quite certain that a newly discovered animal with other typical
mammalian traits, such as hair and a constant, high body
temperature, will also have this method of provisioning its
offspring, even if the first individuals we happen to find are
males, and hence lack functional mammary glands.
Improve our ability to explain relationships among things. For
biologists, this is especially important when we attempt to
reconstruct the evolutionary pathways that have produced the
diversity of organisms living today.
Provide relatively stable, unique, and unequivocal names for
organisms. If those names are changed, the systems provide
means of tracing the changes. Common names, even if they exist
(most organisms do not have common names at all), are
unreliable and often confusing.