The Organizing Knowledge about the Organisms - Assignment Example

ORGANISMS Knowledge organization is a field that defines a field of study related to library and Information science (LIS). It is about the collective activities like documenting, indexing and classification which are performed in libraries archives and databases etc. These tasks are performed by librarians, activists, and subject specialists. It is also done by computer algorithms. Knowledge organization (KO) in short is that field of study which governs nature and quality of knowledge organizing process (KOP) and knowledge organizing systems(KOS) which are involved in the organization of concepts, documentation and the representation of documents. To start from anywhere we must first take up from where everything starts. For everything to be it has to exist. Existence is the world by which we are aware through our senses. It comes from the Latin word “existere” which means to appear or emerge. We see the meaning, if any of the assertions of existence of categories and ideas. Hence ontology is itself the study of categories of things that exist or could exists. So we will start building up our thesaurus by first considering the existence of the organisms and then identifying the categories in which to place them or hat they could be placed. To further build there are certain types like concepts and relation types that we take into consideration. The concepts are equally very important in building up the thesaurus as it is directly related to the categorizing. Then is the task of relating them against each other and grouping. There are two types of ontology the informal and the formal one. By following the informal ontology we cover the types that are defined or undefined and with formal ontology we take names collectively keeping view of concept and relations and build upon by types and subtypes. These subtypes are further differentiated from the supertypes which are the axiomatized ontology and the prototype based ontology. The continued advance of science and human experience keeps adding newer ideas and concepts that require additional extensions to the categories. So we must while building our thesaurus keep in mind of what once Whitehead the philosopher used as his motto “We must be systematic but we should keep our systems open.” Then we come onto the hierarchies of categories, this we based on a framework of distinctions and from there on it was easy to develop the hierarchy automatically. It was then easy to group them according to differences and similarities. So principally we took up what all could exist in our case the organisms and then detailing the categories they can be put under and basically sorting them out. I gradually built my thesaurus by identifying the fundamental entities and relating the properties of the organisms to itself, I concentrated on the essential and attributes of the organisms as the organisms occur in such a diverse form in the environment. I further analyzed what constituted the organism and identified it. I also worked upon how the organisms became extinct and not just merely changed. Naming and classifying of the organisms was another step that is to say the taxonomy. This was a bit challenging as it was not possible to give different names to all the organisms that are identified to this date and then the classifications were another task as the characteristics were so many and so many of them overlapped in some form or the other . For this I went into the phylogeny of the organisms to know about the evolutionary history of the organism to help me classify it. In this respect I found Linnaeus the father of classification work very useful. His system of giving an organism a scientific name of two or more parts called binomial nomenclature helped a lot. Working upon the classification of the organisms was very time consuming as today the classification is just not limited to the structure but takes into account of things like cell types, organization, the biochemical and genetic similarities and the differences. I started by grouping the organisms into large categories called kingdoms and from then onto the sub categories. My work started with the “six Kingdoms of life” that is to say that all living organisms are divided into five kingdoms, namely Monera, the Protista (Protoctista), the Fungi, the Plantae, Archaebacteria and the Animalia. Each kingdom is further subdivided into separate phyla or divisions. Generally "animals" are subdivided into phyla, while "plants" are subdivided into divisions. A product of evolution is organism variety. For this diversity of organisms it is essential to group similar organisms together and then to organize these groups in hierarchical arrangement. Taxonomy is defined as the science of biological classification and consists of three separate yet interrelated parts namely the classification which is the arrangement of organisms into groups or taxa , nomenclature which is the assigning of names to different taxonomic groups and identification which is the process of determining which organism belongs to which taxon. Systematics is the science of classification in which categorizes them in orderly fashion. It encloses morphology, epidemiology, ecology, biochemistry, physiology and molecular biology. (p. 391 Prescott et el, 1996) As quoted by Linnaeus, carolus (late 1700s) the organisms are also classified according to their similar nature. He further developed a system that classified all the organisms at that time. His system was based upon creating and differentiating groups by ways of structural similarities and differences. The term organisms denote all individual forms of life such as plants, animals, bacterium, protist, or fungus. All bodies that are made up of organelles, organs, or other parts that unison function to carry out different processes are also termed as organisms. All organisms consist of monomeric units called cells. Some contain single cell while other could have more than one cell in their composition. Carolus Linnaeus developed a hierarchical classification scheme that remains useful even today. It categorizes them according to their characteristics. Of its two major groups are plants (Plantae) and animals (Animalia).Kingdoms were further divided into phyla and each phylum into classes, each class into order, order into families, families into genera and each genus into species. The estimated number of organisms are Bacteria - 10,000 Archaea - 1,000 Protista - 15,000 Plantae - 270,000 Fungi - 100,000 Animalia - 1,200,000. For this vast variety of organisms it is certainly very difficult to come up with unique names for each. All scientists should revert to earliest and official binomial, yet the newer binomial has become so ingrained in literature that it still continues to be used. Classification of Organisms Linnaean Classification is hierarchical: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. Organisms have names: Common names are redundant and multiple, Latin binomials are universal and almost unique Species of organisms have a recognized binomial: Genus name and specific epithet There are more than a million species of organisms on our planet--most are arthropods Many species on Earth are unknown or virtually unstudied Organisms are grouped into a few kingdoms The number of kingdoms has increased over time on the planet, and in biology over time too Phylogenic Cladistics relates organisms based on evolutionary pathways rather than on taxa All organisms on this planet evolved from a single ancestor and so are a clade. Most of the recognized Kingdoms are close to natural groupings based on shared ancestry Kingdom Protista needs further dissection to become a natural grouping. Another problem that comes up while classifying the organisms is the listing of characteristics which distinguish them between themselves. However it is thus not always eternal as lt is evolutionary and hence there could be new forms of the present forms not just the past that has been classified. Then again most of the species are physically and genetically of many different types. Not only is this but also upon discovering of a new organism there a question about the determining of its specific characteristics that makes it different from others. Now to overcome these problems by addressing how it is different from other organisms that are taking into consideration the minor differences. This is termed as the splitter approach. Then we consider the organism as being different by having major similarities with others .this is termed as the lumper approach. Breeding experiments can also in a great way elevate the difficulties. Meaning, thereby that if two organisms can mate and produce offspring they are of the same species. Although it is true that closely related organisms can also mate for example mules the resultant of horses and donkeys. Hence researchers of today are falling for the cladistics approach of classification today to overcome the problems. This approach provides a difference between derived and primitive traits while evaluating the importance of homologies in the determinacy of placement of organisms in Linnaean classification system. The problems faced while developing the thesaurus for the organisms was with the diversity of these organisms which ranged for just one species into millions and giving a different name to each was very difficult , also in the organisms it is very hard to maintain that all things listed are absolute or have a finality in the assumption , for in this case all being dependent on evolutionary stages it is very easy for any to change over the period of time and hence to identify and categorize it again would be a constant and repetitive factor that would have to be taken up again for as many times as the organism changes. Hence in the organizing knowledge about the organisms many different stratagem were taken up by different scientists in which the hierarchical classification was given by Carolus Linnaean and then there was the systematic by Prescott , Some are in the favor of cladistics approach while many look upon the similarities in classifying the organisms and many at the differences. Hence there are thousands of ways these term thesauri can be built upon and in building up of this thesaurus there was difficulty in placing all the organisms under one category and then having its attributes being similar to another and then finding a common attribute in two categories overlapping and joining them together. Then there was the problem of identifying and trying to address the diverse number of organisms into the major categories and then building upon them relating them to one another finding similarities and differences according to yet again diverse groups and not just characteristics. 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