Linnaean taxonomy

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Linnaean taxonomy refers to the taxonomic system developed in the 18th century by Carolus Linnaeus wherein life forms are classified according to a ranked hierarchy.

The basic hierarchy (leaving out the sub- or super- ranks, and other more technical ranks) is as follows:

Domain
- Kingdom
  - Phylum
    - Class
      - Order
        Family
        Genus
        Species

Linnaean taxonomy was originally developed as a physicotheological system in which nature was viewed as another testament of God to be read much like the Bible. By seeking to document the patterns of concinnity in Creation, Linnaeus and his peers hoped to elucidate the mind of God^[1]. It was not originally meant to describe a system of biological descent, which Linnaeus, a devout Christian and creationist^[2], would have considered shocking^[3]. Linnaeus also applied his taxonomy to mineralogy^[4], but that usage has been superseded by chemical classifications.

Evolutionists inherited the Linnaean system from the Christian founders of biology and tried to adapt it to the Darwinian world view of ever-transmogrifying species. However, since the Linnaean system describes a fixed creation with no way for members of one order or family to move to another order or family, this Neo-Linnaean Synthesis has always been problematic.

While the system is still in almost universal use for the naming and categorizing of creatures -- especially in the form of the binomial nomenclature, where species are given a scientific, Latinate name comprised of a generic and specific descriptor (e.g. the common wombat is known as Vombatus ursinus) -- it has largely been replaced as a framework for describing origins by creation science's baraminology and the evolutionists' cladistics.

Later developments since Linnaeus

Over time, our understanding of the relationships between living things has changed. Linnaeus could only base his scheme on the structural similarities of the different organisms. The greatest change was the generally understood classifications ought to reflect the phylogeny of organisms, by grouping each taxon so as to include the common ancestor of the group's members (and thus to avoid polyphyly). Such taxa may be either monophyletic (including all descendants) such as genus Homo, or paraphyletic (excluding some descendants), such as genus Australopithecus.

Originally, Linnaeus established three kingdoms in his scheme, namely Plantae, Animalia and an additional group for minerals, which has long since been abandoned. Since then, various life forms have been moved into three new kingdoms: Monera, for prokaryotes (i.e., bacteria); Protista, for protozoans and most algae; and Fungi. This five kingdom scheme is still far from the phylogenetic ideal and has largely been supplanted in modern taxonomic work by a division into three domains: Bacteria and Archaea, which contain the prokaryotes, and Eukaryota, comprising the remaining forms. This change was precipitated by the discovery of the Archaea. These arrangements should not be seen as definitive. They are based on the genomes of the organisms; as knowledge on this increases, so will the categories change.