primary qualities

plural noun

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

Example Sentences

Throughout the scientific revolutions of the 17th Century, color was dismissed, along with other aesthetic properties like scent, as a secondary quality — that is, one lacking the explanatory role in the behavior of physical objects of so-called primary qualities, like motion or size or shape.

From Salon

Primary qualities are objective; secondary qualities are subjective, in that they depend on our ways of sensing.

From Literature

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

Primary qualities of an object, such as solidity and occupancy of space, exist independently of a perceiver.

From Scientific American

His primary qualities are technique and vision.

From Washington Times