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/
