History of Taxonomy

Taxonomy is the process of naming and classifying organisms according to a

set of rules. Taxonomic rules are based on traditional uses of plants and
animals in some cultures, and the existence of a classification system
facilitates the transmission of that knowledge through generations.

Early 300 B.C

Ancient Assessment
A Greek thinker and a renowned philosopher named Aristotle had his life
revolving from observing the world around him. He would isolate himself
on things that would extremely pique his interests and curiosities. This results
for him to end up seeing the hierarchy of organisms which he called the
“Ladder of Nature” wherein different organisms showed different levels of
complexity and abilities to thrive. Aristotle categorized humans as the
highest level of organism and divided the animals into categories based
on their anatomical and physiological similarities and differences.

1623
Renaissance Revisions
A Swiss botanist named Gaspard Bauhin introduced naming organisms
with two names which is known as the “Binomial Nomenclature”. For many
years, there was no universal method for naming organisms. Each scientist
had his or her own naming style based on the characteristics of the
organisms that he or she believed were most important. This situation had
significantly improved when Gaspard Bauhin began to make the names
of plants less descriptive. It was implemented later on by Carolus Linnaeus,
a Swedish botanist who understood and recognize the difficulty of naming
organisms.

1753
Linnaeus Lineup
Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist and the “father of taxonomy”
developed the system of classification in taxonomy. He created a
hierarchal classification of organisms with 6 levels, or taxa where living
things are classified based on what were known at his time and shared
obvious physical traits, such as number of legs or shape of leaves are
grouped together. He started with the category of greatest diversity and
worked his way down to the smallest category: Kingdom, Class, Order,
Family, Genus, and Species.
 1859
Publication of the “The Origin of Species”
Early taxonomists only had crude methods of comparing creatures for the
purpose of classification. They believed that there was a set number of
species on Earth and that the species did not change over time. They
reasoned that the two groups had some characteristics in common and
did not believe that the two groups were related to one another. Despite
having uncertainties, they put two groups of organisms into the same
taxon. All of that changed when Charles Darwin published his book “The
Origin of Species”. He observed that all populations of organisms exhibit
individual variation. Although Darwin's theory did not immediately change
taxonomic classifications, it had a significant impact on the importance of
taxa.

1859
Darwin-Mendel
A monk named Gregor Mendel who is now recognized as a “father of
modern genetics” developed a theory which highly influence Charles
Darwin theory. Mendel's theory of genetics provided valuable information
that Darwin's theory lacked. Because genes are the fundamental unit of
inheritance and variation in humans, the genetic sequences of organisms
that are closely related are similar. The more closely two organisms are
related, the more similar their genetic sequences will be. Scientists
eventually learned to use genetic sequences in taxonomy to determine
how closely related two different types of organisms are evolutionarily.

1866-1990s
Modern Taxonomy
The German biologist Ernst Haeckel proposed a new kingdom in 1866, and
Kingdom Protista was born. Since Aristotle's time 2000 years ago, there had
only been the Kingdoms Plantae and Animalia. The system was in
desperate need of an update. In 1937, Edouard Chatton, a French marine
biologist, discovered that all cells could be classified into two types based
on whether or not they had a nucleus. Cells without a nucleus were
referred to as prokaryotes, which means "before nucleus," while those with
a nucleus were referred to as eukaryotes, which means "true nucleus." In
1969, the physicist R.H. Whittaker proposed the formation of two new
kingdoms such as the Kingdom Fungi and Kingdom Prokaryote. At the very
top and the third of the hierarchy, an entirely new level was added in the
mid-1990s. It was then used as of today, which are the Domain, Kingdom,
Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species.
References:

Binomial Nomenclature - Basis of Classification | Term 2 Unit 5 | 7th Science. (n.d.). BrainKart.
https://www.brainkart.com/article/Binomial-Nomenclature_43292/

Taxonomy - History of Taxonomy | Shmoop. (n.d.). Taxonomy - History of Taxonomy | Shmoop.

https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/biology/taxonomy/taxonomy-history

5.1: Linnaean Classification. (2016, September 23). Biology LibreTexts.

https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_General_Biology/Book%3A_Introduct
ory_Biology_(CK-12)/05%3A_Evolution/5.01%3A_Linnaean_Classification

Group Members:
Pearl Musa
Cecile Musa
Fausto Mirabite III
Ronalyn T. Malupa
Elyssa Danah Famorcan