ABSTRACT
Quantitative methods have long been heralded for their ability to synthesize the basic meaning in a body of knowledge. Aristotle emphasized meaning through the notion of “definition” as the set of necessary and sufficient properties that allowed an unfolding of understanding about concrete or abstract phenomena; Plato thought of essence or meaning as the basic form (Lakoff & Nu´n˜ez, 2000). Providing insight into central meaning is at the heart of most mathematics, which uses axioms and categorical forms to define the nature of specific mathematical systems.
