Talk:Lumpers and splitters
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I saw this article criticized on Usenet, and thought I'd attempt to summarize here:
The "lumpers and splitters" label is more than a century older than claimed here. That whole section is rubbish, though perhaps better written rubbish than I could manage. I'll cite the OED here, but it's not open access, so I'll supply a URL but not everyone will be able to look at the source itself. Here is the link to the first entry I am citing:
And here is a subset of that entry (I don't think copying the entire thing is proper fair use, but IANAL) :
lumper, n. [ . . . ] 3. Taxonomy. A taxonomist who is unwilling to use minute variations as a basis for the establishment of a large number of different species or genera. 1857 DARWIN in Life & Lett. (1887) II. 105 It is good to have hair-splitters and lumpers. 1894 Cornh. Mag. Mar. 295 Modern biologists are divided into the two camps of the splitters and the lumpers. The first are in favour of making a species out of every petty..variety; the second are all for lumping unimportant minor forms into a single species. 1945 A. YOUNG Prospect of Flowers xx. 151 Botanists are divided into two classes, ‘splitters’ and ‘lumpers’, ‘splitters’ being those who split plants into a large number of species and sub-species, while ‘lumpers’, impatient of minute distinctions, are inclined to lump them together. 1967 A. W. JONES Introd. Parasitol. xxix. 419 The more conservative taxonomists, called irreverently ‘lumpers’, defended established categories from attack by the radical ‘splitters’. 1972 Sci. Amer. Nov. 60/2 One can use the work of many different taxonomists, without regard to whether they are ‘lumpers’ or ‘splitters’ in their method of classification, as long as the work is self-consistent.
And the corresponding quote from splitter:
splitter, n., 2. b. [ . . .] 1887 Darwin's Life & Lett. II. 105 note, Those who make many species are the ‘splitters’, and those who make few are the ‘lumpers’. 1898 Athenæum 22 Jan. 123/1 Babington belonged to that category of botanists..denominated ‘splitters’.
I'd love to help write the replacement, but I'm not an expert, and I'd surely be replacing well-written but inaccurate rubbish with slightly more accurate but poorly written rubbish ;-) So, hopefully someone else will mend the article.
24.6.122.149 (talk) 08:18, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
