Analytic Culture in the U.S. Intelligence Community (PDF) - CIA

CHAPTER THREE
A Taxonomy of Intelligence Variables 1
Science is organized knowledge.
Herbert Spencer 2
Aristotle may be the father of scientific classification, but it was biologist
Carolus Linnaeus who introduced the first formal taxonomy—kingdom, class,
order, genera, and species—in his Systema Naturae in 1735. By codifying the
naming conventions in biology, Linnaeus’s work provided a reference point
for future discoveries. Darwin’s development of an evolutionary theory, for
example, benefited greatly from Linnaeus’s creation of a hierarchical grouping
of related organisms. The Systema Naturae taxonomy was not a fixed
product but rather a living document. Linnaeus himself revised it through 10
editions, and later biologists have continued to modify it. 3
In response to new discoveries and the development of new research methods
in other domains, taxonomies were created to help organize those disciplines
and to assist researchers in identifying variables that required additional
study. The development of specific taxonomies—from highly structured systems,
such as the periodic table of chemical elements, to less structured
approaches, such as Bloom’s Taxonomy 4 —is a key step in organizing knowl-
1
A version of this chapter, “Developing a Taxonomy of Intelligence Analysis Variables,” originally
appeared in Studies in Intelligence 47, no. 3 (2003): 61–71.
2
Herbert Spencer’s The Study of Sociology, published in 1874, set the stage for the emergence of
sociology as a discipline.
3
Ernst Haeckel introduced phylum to include related classes and family to include related genera in
1866. The Linnaeus taxonomy is currently being revised to accommodate genomic mapping data.
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