taxonomy (redirected from Taxology)

taxonomy: see classification.

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taxonomy

In biology, the classification of organisms into a hierarchy of groupings, from the general to the particular, that reflect evolutionary and usually morphological relationships: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. The black-capped chickadee, for example, is an animal (kingdom Animalia) with a dorsal nerve cord (phylum Chordata) and feathers (class Aves: birds) that perches (order Passeriformes: perching birds) and is small with a short bill (family Paridae), a song that sounds like “chik-a-dee” (genus Parus), and a black-capped head (species atricapillus). Most authorities recognize five kingdoms: monerans (prokaryotes), protists, fungi (see fungus), plants, and animals. Carolus Linnaeus established the scheme of using Latin generic and specific names in the mid-18th century; his work was extensively revised by later biologists.

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The classification, or categorization, of things. For example, a Web taxonomy would classify all the sites on the Web into a hierarchy for searching purposes. This comes from the Greek words "taxis" and "nomos," which mean "division" and "law."