Dualism of the major notions of soil classification

The dualism of notions is a common form of our perception of the world. Thus, the notion of a classification system actually includes two complementary parts: taxonomy and meronymy. Taxonomy describes the structure of taxonomic units (taxa) and their relationships, whereas meronymy deals with the structure of the archetypes and meronyms (parts of the whole) composing them and linked by associative relations. An archetype can be defined as a generalized image consisting of meronyms that can be definitely described by a set of characteristics. Each archetype in meronymy has a corresponding taxon in taxonomy. The notions of the object of classification and the particular objects (things) representing it are explained. The notions of soil objects are somewhat different and depend on the goals and kinds of classification (conceptual, physical, or imaginable). Substantive (natural) classifications that encompass the entire set of conceivable objects (entirety) can be referred to as intensional classifications. They should be distinguished from extensional classifications dealing with a particular group of objects (data) and aimed at their arrangement in a convenient way. Extensional soil classification systems are those systems that actually arrange the lists of known soils into some order according to the rules formulated by their authors.