To many people taxonomy is a dull discipline concerned filling organisms in boxes and assigning them jaw-breaking Latin names.
However, taxonomy's goal of finding the natural order of living things is a crucial part of the evidence for evolution. It's main contribution is the notion that there is a heirarchy of living things - a "Tree of Life."
|
Category |
Domestic cat |
Common buttercup |
|
Kingdom |
Animalia (animals) |
Planate (plants) |
|
Phylum/Division |
Chordata (chordates) |
Anthophyta (flowering plants) |
|
Subphylum |
Vertebrata (vertebrates) |
- |
|
Class |
Mammalia (mammals) |
Dicotyledons (dicots) |
|
Order |
Carnivoria (carnivores) |
Ranunculales |
|
Family |
Felidae (cats) |
Ranunculaceae (crowfoot family) |
|
Genus |
Felis |
Ranunculus |
|
Species |
silvestris |
acris |
 |
Our system for classifiying living oprganisms dates from Linneaus's System Naturae (1758). The Linnean heirarchy is explicitly tree-like, which raises the question, "why should similarities between living organisms be nested?" Campbell: see page 475, fig. 25.2 |
