quality:corruption, information:classification
Modern standards of rigor

Placing Euclidean geometry on a solid axiomatic basis was a preoccupation of mathematicians for centuries. The role of primitive notions, or undefined concepts, was clearly put forward by Alessandro Padoa of the Peano delegation at the 1900 Paris conference:

...when we begin to formulate the theory, we can imagine that the undefined symbols are completely devoid of meaning and that the unproved propositions are simply conditions imposed upon the undefined symbols.

Then, the system of ideas that we have initially chosen is simply one interpretation of the undefined symbols; but..this interpretation can be ignored by the reader, who is free to replace it in his mind by another interpretation.. that satisfies the conditions...

Logical questions thus become completely independent of empirical or psychological questions...

The system of undefined symbols can then be regarded as the abstraction obtained from the specialized theories that result when...the system of undefined symbols is successively replaced by each of the interpretations...

That is, mathematics is context-independent knowledge within a hierarchical framework. As said by Bertrand Russell:

If our hypothesis is about anything, and not about some one or more particular things, then our deductions constitute mathematics. Thus, mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

Such foundational approaches range between foundationalism and formalism.