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

See Examples For:

primary qualities

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

Now the other primary qualities of matter are unaffected by circumstances.

From Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence by Bassnett, Thomas

The primary qualities, being the general laws or forms of organic Energy-transmutation, are in a higher sense ideal, for they are the necessary conditions under which both sense-presentation and ideative representation proceed.

From Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge by Philip, Alexander

And of primary qualities, also, precisely the same thing may with equal confidence be alleged.

From Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics With Some of Their Applications by Thornton, William Thomas

Berkeley was the first thinker clearly to perceive the unsubstantial nature of a world made up solely of primary qualities.

From International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume I Philosophy and Metaphysics by Various