Abstract: This invention describes a system and method for creating analyzing, and comparing proxy representations of persons, places, things, concepts, and constructs for purposes of knowledge management, knowledge discovery, and information retrieval. To facilitate the system an archetype is created that contains a list of words and or phrase descriptors of the object represented by the proxy, an additional list of draws to the proxy consisting of words or phrases describing objects that have a positive affinity with the object being described by the proxy, and an additional list of distances to the proxy consisting of words or phrases describing objects that have a negative affinity with the object being described by the proxy. Both draws and distances may be assigned an amplitude, such that the feature space described by the archetype becomes dimensionalized.