Triangulation. It’s the same process as disambiguation by Serialization and operationalization. Use of adversarial competition to rank by one or more dimensions.
Art is the best example of something we presume can’t be objectively measured.
But we can judge almost anything by the accumulated excellence of human actions: caloric content (more dependencies is better).
Take an art movement. Take the examples of that movement. analyze and rank by craftsmanship(construction, technique, materials), design(aesthetics, composition, light, color, texture, ), meaning (content, simple content to high content).
Compare the ultimate achievements of that movement with those that were less so. Order them – this is triangulation. “Where does this fit between what other two?”
You will notice that the progression is not linear but logarithmic, with many adequate pieces and few superior.
You now have an ordinal if logarithmically scaling measure if not a cardinal and linear measure.
Keep adding artworks until because of marginal indifference, you must categorize groups instead of stacking individual pieces.
Now those categories produce a cardinal measure. Repeat for all art movements.
Then stack those movements.
You now have a metric for judging pieces (three dimensions), categories (one or three dimensions), and movements (one or three dimensions).
Art is the hardest thing I know of, but the triangulation is how the brain works internally, so … well, there you go.
