Bipolarity in social sciences and mathematics

Abstract

The polarity of concepts and the dialectic process by which its meaning emerges has been subject of interest since the ancient Greeks. Recently, the term Bipolarity has been used in social and mathematical sciences, referring to the measurement of the meaning of concepts. It is claimed that the measuring process has to consider at least an associated pair of meaningful opposites, such that some type of structure is used to analyze the aspect of reality that is being modeled. From this point of view, we take a quick overview on the genealogy of Bipolarity, discussing some ideas about the nature of negative knowledge, and how it has been examined recently, and not so recently, by the mathematical community.