primary qualities

British  

plural noun

1. (in empiricist philosophy) those properties of objects that are directly known by experience, such as size, shape, and number

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Example Sentences

This bus has primary qualities of solidity and space occupancy that exist independently of our perceptual machinery and that can do us injury.

From Scientific American • Aug. 27, 2019

It is to man what impenetrability, with the other primary qualities, is to matter.

From Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 3 (of 3) by Parker, Theodore

In the first rank among the primary qualities is solidity, which is given to you in the sensation of resistance, and inevitably accompanied by form, etc.

From Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good by Cousin, Victor

It cannot be that the primary qualities really existed in the simple state extra animam, and then all existing things were made out of them.

From A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy by Husik, Isaac

Even our knowledge of the persistence of force and of the primary qualities of matter is but of relative significance.

From A Candid Examination of Theism by Romanes, George John