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In biology, taxonomy (from Ancient Greek τάξις 'arrangement' and -νομία 'method') is the scientific study of naming, defining (circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics.
[3] [4] The taxonomy criteria of medieval texts is different from what is used today. Plants with similar external appearance were usually grouped under the same species name, though in modern taxonomy they are considered different. [5] Abū l-Khayr's botanical work [6] is the most complete Andalusi botanical text known to modern scholars.
Linnaean taxonomy can mean either of two related concepts: The particular form of biological classification (taxonomy) set up by Carl Linnaeus, as set forth in his Systema Naturae (1735) and subsequent works. In the taxonomy of Linnaeus there are three kingdoms, divided into classes, and the classes divided into lower ranks in a hierarchical order.
In Western Europe, after Theophrastus, botany passed through a bleak period of 1800 years when little progress was made and, indeed, many of the early insights were lost. As Europe entered the Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries), China, India and the Arab world enjoyed a golden age.
Only in the animal kingdom is the higher taxonomy of Linnaeus still more or less recognizable and some of these names are still in use, but usually not quite for the same groups as used by Linnaeus. He divided the Animal Kingdom into six classes; in the tenth edition (1758), these were: Mammalia comprised the mammals.
Evolutionary thought, the recognition that species change over time and the perceived understanding of how such processes work, has roots in antiquity. With the beginnings of modern biological taxonomy in the late 17th century, two opposed ideas influenced Western biological thinking: essentialism, the belief that every species has essential characteristics that are unalterable, a concept ...
The history of biology traces the study of the living world from ancient to modern times. Although the concept of biology as a single coherent field arose in the 19th century, the biological sciences emerged from traditions of medicine and natural history reaching back to Ayurveda, ancient Egyptian medicine and the works of Aristotle, Theophrastus and Galen in the ancient Greco-Roman world.
The classification of living things into animals and plants is an ancient one. Aristotle (384–322 BC) classified animal species in his History of Animals , while his pupil Theophrastus ( c. 371 – c. 287 BC ) wrote a parallel work, the Historia Plantarum , on plants.