Lumping and splitting refers to a well known problem in any discipline which has to place individual examples into rigorously defined categories. The lumper/splitter problem occurs when there is the need to create classifications and assign examples to them, for example schools of literature, biological paleo-species and so on. A "lumper" is an individual who takes a gestalt view of a definition, and assigns examples broadly, assuming that differences are not as important as signature similarities. A "splitter" is an individual who takes precise definitions, and creates new categories to classify samples that differ in key ways. Old book bindings at the Merton College library. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Look up gestalt in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Origin of the terms

The terms emerged from a debate in 1975 between J. H. Hexter and Christopher Hill in the Times Literary Supplement. it followed from Hexter's detailed review of Hill's book Change and Continuity in Seventeenth Century England, in which Hill developed Max Weber's argument that the rise of capitalism was facilitated by Calvinist Puritanism. Hexter objected to Hill's 'mining' of sources to find evidence that supported his theories. Hexter argued that Hill plucked quotations from sources in a way that distorted their meaning. Hexter explained this as a mental habit that he called 'lumping'. According to him, 'Lumpers' rejected differences and chose to emphasize similarities. Any evidence that did not fit their arguments was ignored as aberrant. 'Splitters', in contrast, emphasised differences, and resisted simple schemes. 'Lumpers' consistently tried to create coherent patterns. 'Splitters' preferred incoherent complexity.^[1] In a similar vein, historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin categorized thinkers as 'Hedgehogs' (lumpers) and 'Foxes' (splitters) in his essay on Leo Tolstoy, 'The Hedgehox and the Fox'. Jack H. Hexter (May 25, 1910–December 8, 1996) was an American historian, a specialist in Tudor and seventeenth century British history, and well known for his comments on historiography. ... John Edward Christopher Hill (February 6, 1912 _ February 23, 2003) was an English Marxist historian and the author of many history textbooks. ... The Times Literary Supplement (or TLS) is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation. ... For other persons named Max Weber, see Max Weber (disambiguation). ... In an unadorned church, the 17th century congregation stands to hear the sermon. ...

Lumping and splitting in biology

The naming of a particular species should be regarded as a hypothesis about the evolutionary relationships and distinguishability of that group of organisms. As further information comes to hand, the hypothesis may be confirmed or refuted. Sometimes, especially in the past when communication was more difficult, taxonomists working in isolation have given two distinct names to individual organisms later identified as the same species. When two named species are discovered to be of the same species, the older species name is usually retained, and the newer species name dropped, a process called synonymization, or convivially, as lumping. Dividing a taxon into multiple, often new, taxa is called splitting. Taxonomists are often referred to as "lumpers" or "splitters" by their colleagues, depending on their personal approach to recognizing differences or commonalities between organisms. This article is about evolution in biology. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

Lumping and splitting in history

Main article: periodization

In history lumpers are those who tend to create broad definitions that cover large periods of time and many disciplines, whereas splitters want to assign names to tight groups of inter-relationships. Periodization is the attempt to categorize or divide time into discrete named blocks. ...

Each approach has its well known problems. Lumping tends to create a more and more unwieldy definition, with members having less and less mutually in common. This can lead to definitions which are little more than conventionalities, or groups which join fundamentally different examples. Splitting often leads to "distinctions without difference", ornate and fussy categories, and failure to see underlying similarities.

For example, in the arts, "Romantic" can refer specifically to a period of German poetry roughly from 1780-1810, but would exclude the later work of Goethe, among other writers. In music it can mean every composer from Hummel through Rachmaninoff, plus many that came after. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (pronounced [gø tə]) (August 28, 1749–March 22, 1832) was a German writer, politician, humanist, scientist, and philosopher. ... Johann Nepomuk Hummel Johann Nepomuk Hummel or Jan Nepomuk Hummel (14 November 1778 – 17 October 1837) was a composer and virtuoso pianist of Austrian origin who was born in Pressburg (present-day Bratislava, Slovakia). ... Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff (Russian: , Sergej Vasil’evič Rachmaninov, 1 April 1873 (N.S.) or 20 March 1873 (O.S.) – 28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. ...

Lumping and splitting in software modelling

Software engineering often proceeds by building models (sometimes known as Model-Driven Architecture). A lumper is always keen to generalize, and produces models with a small number of broadly defined objects. A splitter is reluctant to generalize, and produces models with a large number of narrowly defined objects. For example, according to the lumpers, a subcontractor could be basically the same as any other supplier, and is therefore the same class; meanwhile the splitters would probably argue that there are significant differences between different groups of suppliers, justifying separate classes in the model. The Model-Driven Architecture (MDAâ„¢) is a software design approach that was officially launched in 2001 by its sponsor, the Object Management Group (OMG)[1]. MDA is intended to support model-driven engineering of software systems. ...

Lumping and splitting in language classification

Language families with lumper-splitter controversies include Ural-Altaic, Altaic itself, Austric, Nostratic, and Joseph Greenberg's similar Eurasiatic, his Amerind languages, Indo-Pacific, and Nilo-Saharan, and above all Merritt Ruhlen's Proto-World. The Ural-Altaic language family is a grouping of languages which was once widely accepted by linguists, but has since become contoversial. ... Altaic is a proposed language family which includes 66 languages [1] spoken by about 348 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and northeast Asia. ... The Austric language superfamily is a large theoretical grouping of languages primarily spoken in South East Asia and the Pacific. ... Nostratic is a highly controversial language super-family that putatively links many Eurasian language families. ... Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915–May 7, 2001) was a prominent and controversial linguist, known for his work in both language classification and typology. ... The Eurasiatic languages are a hypotetical language group from which allegedly descend several language families of Europe and Asia, including Indo-European languages, Uralic and Altaic. ... In addition to its use by social scientists to refer (broadly) to the various indigenous languages of The Americas, the term Amerind languages may controversially refer to one of the three families in Joseph H. Greenbergs classification of all Native American languages—the other two being Na-Dene... The Indo-Pacific is the aggregate of the Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean, and the minor seas between the two in the general area of Indonesia. ... Map showing the distribution of the Nilo-Saharan languages. ... Merritt Ruhlen is a lecturer in Anthropological Sciences and Human Biology at Stanford, and a co-director of the Santa Fe Institute Program on the Evolution of Human Languages. ... The term Proto-World language refers to the hypothetical, most recent common ancestor of all the worlds languages – an ancient proto-language from which are derived all modern languages, all language families, and all dead languages known from the past 6,000 years of recorded history. ...

Splitters regard reconstruction of a common ancestor (protolanguage) via the comparative method as the only valid proof of relationship, and consider genetic relatedness to be the question of interest. American linguists of recent decades tend to be splitters. Proto-language may either refer to a language that preceded a certain set of given languages, or to system of communication during a stage in glottogony that may not yet be properly called a language. ... The comparative method (in comparative linguistics) is a technique used by linguists to demonstrate genetic relationships between languages. ... Genetic, in linguistics, means due to descent from a common ancestor language, rather than borrowing at some time in the past between languages that were not necessarily descended from a common ancestor. ...

Lumpers are more willing to admit techniques like mass lexical comparison or lexicostatistics, and mass typological comparison, and to tolerate the uncertainty of whether relationships found by these methods are the result of linguistic divergence (descent from common ancestor) or language convergence (borrowing). Much long-range comparison work has been from Russian linguists like Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Sergei Starostin. In the US, Greenberg's and Ruhlen's work has been well publicized. Some well-known earlier American linguists like Morris Swadesh and Edward Sapir also pursued large-scale classifications. Mass lexical comparison or mass comparison is a highly controversial method developed by the well-known linguist Joseph Greenberg to find genetic relationships among languages in the remote past, beyond the limits of the traditional comparative method, or in situations where there are too many languages to practically apply the... In linguistics, the technique of glottochronology is used to estimate the time of divergence of two related languages. ... Linguistic speciation, or linguistic divergence, is the fissioning of language groups. ... Language convergence is a type of contact-induced change whereby languages of equal social prestige with many bilingual speakers mutually borrow morphological and syntactic features, making their typology more similar. ... Vladislav Markovich Illich-Svitych (1934-66) was a founding father of comparative Nostratic linguistics. ... Dr. Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (b. ... Morris Swadesh (January 22, 1909 - July 20, 1967) was an American linguist. ... Edward Sapir. ...

See also

• Evolutionary biology
• Sorites paradox

Evolutionary biology is a subfield of biology concerned with the origin and descent of species, as well as their change, multiplication, and diversity over time. ... The Sorites paradox (σωρός (sōros) being Greek for heap and σωρίτης (sōritēs) the adjective) is a paradox that arises from vague predicates. ...

External links

• Abstraction: Lumpers and Splitters