What is actually systematics? What is the difference between it & taxonomy?

Question

In the last century, even during the past decades of the present century, students of systematics could not have thought of any fundamental distinctions among Taxonomy & Systematics . These terms appeared to them more or less synonymous and hence often misunderstood until G.S.Simpson(1961) analysed each of the terms separately & gave a comprehensive definition of each term and its workable areas so that their underlying fundamentals became clear.

This is what I found in my book. But what is actually Systematics? And what is the difference between it and taxonomy??

Answer 1

Systematics studies the diversification and relationships of past and present living forms. Taxonomy is only a part of systematics as defined by Michener et al. in 1970:

Systematic biology (hereafter called simply systematics) is the field that (a) provides scientific names for organisms, (b) describes them, (c) preserves collections of them, (d) provides classifications for the organisms, keys for their identification, and data on their distributions, (e) investigates their evolutionary histories, and (f) considers their environmental adaptations. This is a field with a long history that in recent years has experienced a notable renaissance, principally with respect to theoretical content. Part of the theoretical material has to do with evolutionary areas (topics e and f above), the rest relates especially to the problem of classification. Taxonomy is that part of Systematics concerned with topics (a) to (d) above.

Source: Michener, Charles D., John O. Corliss, Richard S. Cowan, Peter H. Raven, Curtis W. Sabrosky, Donald S. Squires, and G. W. Wharton (1970). Systematics In Support of Biological Research. Division of Biology and Agriculture, National Research Council. Washington, D.C. 25 pp.

via Wikipedia contributors, "Systematics," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Systematics&oldid=635316421 (accessed November 30, 2014).

Answer 2

To put it simply, you know that Taxonomy is the branch of biology that deals with the classification of living organisms.

Systematics, on the other hand, is nothing but Taxonomy + Phylogeny (i.e evolutionary relationships b/w organisms) Hence, we can say that Taxonomy is a part of Systematics. Talk about evolutionary history/relationships between organisms, and you get Systematics.

Hope this helps :)