Numerical addition

 Numerical addition - 

‘5 + 3’ 

What's going on here? Apparently, you can't do anything with this; you can’t add ("put together") these 2 “strangers”. Should you merge these 2 shapes? Should you plug them together as '53'?...........

You can only add the same things.

But here you are ACTUALLY adding 5 1s and 3 1s. You are adding 1s - these are the same things.

Addition is holding together the separate added entities as one set, of 1s. 

||||| + ||| = |||||||| 

***** + OOO = invalid numerically. 

When one says what is ‘40+30’, it actually means 40 of the same thing and 30 of that very same thing. In a numerical sense, these are 1s. That is why numerical addition works, without it being stated - ‘things’.