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Defining "taxonomy"

Patrick Lambe has written an excellent blog post that defines "taxonomy" (including a nice diagram). To quote:

Yesterday I made the claim that a taxonomy cannot be defined by its shape, which is mostly how it does get defined eg "A taxonomy is a hierarchical arrangement of terms blah blah blah...". I argued that taxonomies should be defined more by their purpose and use, less by the structural form they happen to take (which can vary according to circumstance). What would a more useful definition be? To start with, we need to go back beyond Linnaeus and the rather narrow sense of "taxonomy" developed by biologists. Let's go back to the Greek roots and see what they deliver.

Posted by jamesr on April 23, 2006 12:36 PM
Categories: Information architecture