Taxonomy Development
The Field
Any taxonomy must cover a particular field, identifying its elemental contents, and resolving confusions by naming and describing objects within it unambiguously and precisely.
The field studied here is «personal functioning». Because this leads to endeavours and generates psychosocial reality, much of which does not appear personal at first sight, both «endeavour» and «psychosocial reality» also define the field.
Psychosocial reality covers all personal, organizational and social endeavours: processes and structures. The focus is therefore on everything dependent on personal effort, and it engages fundamentally with our and .
To exist psychosocially, awareness is necessary i.e. the element must be able to enter consciousness. So a Taxonomy of Human Elements in Endeavour, THEE, is also a Taxonomy of Consciousness Elements. Awareness is a pre-requisite for the recording, manipulation and social sharing of elements. This allows human beings to engage together in complex and lengthy endeavours.
The various taxonomic things (i.e. elements or entities) exist concretely and enduringly within psychosocial reality, but not within physical reality as usually understood. These elements must be given distinctive names so we can refer precisely to them.
Everything in the Taxonomy is:
- partly inner experience (i.e. private)
- partly shareable social phenomena (i.e. public).
Taxonomic Study: Discrimination
Any taxonomy is about discrimination: the issue is the criteria to be used in defining and describing. Because purpose is the driver in creating psychosocial reality, things within it must be correctly and precisely delineated in terms of:
- a function—the essence of the thing that constitutes personal functioning.
- properties—its distinguishing qualities
- relationships—its effects and interactions with other things.
Psychosocial reality can be subdivided into distinct domains. If we wish to reap the benefits from delineating any of these, we must engage in careful specific study. Only disciplined categorization will permit us to appreciate the diversity and differentiation within a particular domain.
Characteristics required of any suitable Taxonomy, as described in the About section, include: unified-comprehensive, dynamic, useful, atheoretical, dilemma-sensitive, ethical, frame-dependent.
THEE has an important unusual property in being reflective. It contains and describes the fundamentals of itself, its discovery and its use.
Current State of Development
Frameworks were developed in the 1980's. but a full awareness that these constituted a taxonomy only emerged late in the 1990s. This followed from the way new discoveries clarified how the many diverse frameworks were probably inter-connected.
Many years have passed since then leading to the development of many additional frameworks and a firming up of taxonomic principles. As a result, the unified architecture of the Taxonomy, with its forms and processes, became much clearer. The bulk of this work was carried out 2000-2012.
Taxonomic elaboration and clarification had come far enough that it became possible to consider meta-thee perspectives. These investigations commenced in 2013 within the Architecture Room.
The most important result of these studies has been a clarification of the basic conceptions, which were posted formally in 2015. This reconceptualizion of the Taxonomy and its architecture harmonizes with evolutionary notions.
You can see an overview summary with diagrams. However, errors exist and more discoveries certainly lie ahead. See errors/puzzles.
Also:
● A one-page scientific-technical summary is provided here.
● The current list of posted frameworks is regularly updated here.
- In this section, examine principles relevant to the architecture, naming, inquiry, and validation.
- In the next section, examine the forms and processes found within the architecture.
Reading Materials
Originally posted: August 2009. Last updated: 2-Feb-2014.