
Left: a banner (Ѻ) for the William Paterson Sociology Department. Right: a generic Physics Department banner. The former tends to be overtly secular, albeit theistically implicit, whereas the latter is secularly-neutral and implicitly atheistic. This is the underlying reason for anti-interdisciplinarity, in large part

Left: a banner (Ѻ) for the William Paterson Sociology Department. Right: a generic Physics Department banner. The former tends to be overtly secular, albeit theistically implicit, whereas the latter is secularly-neutral and implicitly atheistic. This is the underlying reason for anti-interdisciplinarity, in large part

In terminology, anti-interdisciplinarity, or the “disciplinarity fragmentation issue”, as opposed to interdisciplinarity, refers to a philosophy, held by anti-interdisciplinaritists (some of whom may also be anti-reductionists), aka “splitters”, e.g. Francis Collins or Philip Anderson, as opposed to interdisciplinaritists (some of whom may also be reductionists), aka “lumpers”, e.g. Josip Stepanic or Gheorghe Savoiu, as Harold Morowitz (1979) classified things, who believe that different disciplines, such as sociology and thermodynamics, i.e. socio-thermodynamics, or sociology and biology, i.e. sociobiology, should be kept apart in their special “disciplines”; Richard Lewontin’s Not in Our Genes (1984), wherein the sociobiology of Edward Wilson and Richard Dawkins is criticized (Ѻ), supposedly, being one example of a pro anti-interdisciplinarity position. [1]

Overview
In 1979, Harold Morowitz, in his “Splitters and Lumpers” essay, famously stated things as follows: [2]

“The terms ‘splitters’ and ‘lumpers’ come from taxonomy, where the classifiers were separated into those who liked to create new taxa because of small differences and those who preferred to coalesce categories because of similarities. The concept has found wider applicability as knowledge in all fields expands. Specialists are confined to ever-narrowing domains while generalists survey the immensity of information in an effort, one hopes, to find higher orders of structure. It is clear that in the university and intellectual community ... the splitters are in command and the lumpers are in serious disarray, unable to keep up with the output of printouts that are generated in such a variety of ways. It is saddening to witness the loss of status of those engaged in integrative thought, for one sees in it the fragmentation of scientific and humanistic disciplines.”

(add discussion)

Quotes
The following are example quotes:

“When Francis Collins, splitter extraordinaire, was put in charge of the whole NIH, the entire gene story became a recital of reductionism gone berserk. Long live us lumpers. Beware of splitters.”
— Walter Bortz (2013), “Dare to be 100: Splitters and Lumpers

References
1. Bortz, Walter M. (2013). “Dare to be 100: Splitters and Lumpers” (Ѻ), Blog, Huffington Post, Feb 11.
2. Morowitz, Harold. (1979). “Splitters and Lumpers” (Ѻ), in: The Wine of Life and Other Essays on Society, Energy & Living Things. St. Martins.