section_path: History/Pre-Linnaean/Medieval
section_name: Medieval
paragraph_text: Medieval
  
  Taxonomy in the Middle Ages was largely based on the Aristotelian system, with additions concerning the philosophical and existential order of creatures. This included concepts such as the great chain of being in the Western scholastic tradition, again deriving ultimately from Aristotle.
  
  The Aristotelian system did not classify plants or fungi, due to the lack of microscopes at the time, as his ideas were based on arranging the complete world in a single continuum, as per the scala naturae (the Natural Ladder). This, as well, was taken into consideration in the great chain of being.
  
  Advances were made by scholars such as Procopius, Timotheus of Gaza, Demetrios Pepagomenos, and Thomas Aquinas. Medieval thinkers used abstract philosophical and logical categorizations more suited to abstract philosophy than to pragmatic taxonomy.