Editing Lumpers and splitters (section)

{{Short description|Opposing approaches to categorisation}}
{{More citations needed|date=January 2014}}

'''Lumpers''' and '''splitters''' are opposing factions in any [[academic discipline]] that has to place individual examples into rigorously defined [[Categorization|categories]]. The lumper–splitter problem occurs when there is the desire to create classifications and assign examples to them, for example, schools of [[literature]], [[biology|biological]] [[taxon|taxa]], and so on. A "lumper" is a person who assigns examples broadly, judging that differences are not as important as signature similarities. A "splitter" makes precise definitions, and creates new categories to classify samples that differ in key ways.