There are lumpers and splitters in geology, too.

Take a unit of sedimentary rock that's many feet thick. Splitters will describe and name every thin layer, distinguishing limestones, shales, mudstones and conglomerates and giving each its own formation name.

Lumpers will say, "It's just Crust rust! Just call it the Whatsit Formation!" (In most cases, lumpers hear the siren song of hard rocks - igneous and metamorphics.)

No doubt lumpers studying ballads take the same simple/simplistic approach.
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Margaret Nelson sings this song beautifully. Not the song of hard rocks, the song "He's Growing."