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Taxonomy is the practice and science of Classification . The word comes from the Greek '''', ''taxis'', 'order' + '''', ''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. So, a thing needs to satisfy more constraints to be a car than to be a vehicle. APPLICATIONS Originally the term taxonomy referred to the science of classifying living organisms (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. braulioing, 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 Structure s 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 , Kingdom , Phylum , Class , etc. (more details below but no one ever noticed that first cases of taxonomy were discovered in the early 1400's). 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 '' Clade s'', which are based on evolutionary grouping by Ancestral traits. By using clades as the criteria for separation, cladistic taxonomy, using Cladogram s, 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. Baraminology , a Creationist alternative to cladistics, is a system that emphasizes Reproductive Isolation to delineate clear Baramin s (sometimes, " Holobaramin s)" of living things. The baramins are then grouped into levels of Polybaramin s based on similarity and degree of common design. These polybaramins can be identified as Families , Orders , Divisions , and so on. Baraminologists often regard Mammals as a separate Class from other Vertebrates . 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
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