From: Curtis Clark (jcclark@mockfont.com)
Date: Wed Dec 24 2003 - 16:00:12 EST
on 2003-12-24 12:29 Elaine Keown wrote:
> It appears to me that script experts may resemble
> experts in dialects/languages: there are lumpers and
> splitters........
Following up on my post about wariness to unify being correct in first
principles:
My day job uses my training as a plant taxonomist, a field in which
there are also lumpers and splitters. I am a lumper, but, as you say, a
"thinking lumper". If I have any doubts about whether two species of
plant are separate, I maintain them as separate, in part as a challenge
to future taxonomists (or me) to demonstrate that they are truly the
same. Lumped species are "under the radar"--nonspecialists looking at
them may never be aware of the disparate elements that make them up, and
even specialists may not think to revisit them. It is ultimately easier
to lump than to split (with plants, and I assume with languages and
scripts as well), so those of us who are lumpers have a greater
responsibility--it "comes with the territory".
-- Curtis Clark http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/ Mockingbird Font Works http://www.mockfont.com/
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