The preface to the Systematics Association volume The New Taxonomy, published over a decade ago, stated that “no investment in science is more urgent, timely, or certain to be repaid in leaps of knowledge and understanding than funding taxonomy, taxonomic collections and a taxonomy-specific cyberinfrastructure.” Several initiatives have since nominally addressed the need to bring taxonomy into the information age, but while worthy, each has focused on improved access to taxonomic information by its users rather than its practitioners. If this trend continues, taxonomy is in danger of becoming little more than an identification service to other biologists – with no way of knowing whether the identifications are of actual biological entities. It is imperative that taxonomy is restored to its earlier status as an independent, curiosity-driven, fundamental science with its own mission, goals, theories, and methods. Such a strong taxonomy will not only lead to major scientific discoveries about life and its history, it will ultimately deliver more and better information to users of taxonomy. This symposium will tackle some of the issues that are required to bring about this desire.