Definition of primary qualities in English:

primary qualities

plural noun

  • 1Properties or qualities, such as size, motion, shape, number, etc., belonging to physical matter independently of an observer.

    • ‘Moreover, primary qualities are never perceived except in conjunction with secondary qualities.’
    • ‘The scientist, he writes, is concerned with what are [the] primary qualities originally and unalterably impressed on matter, and… the spirit of the laws of nature.’
    • ‘Galileo, Descartes, and Newton had accepted the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, and had suggested that extension, position, and motion were primary qualities.’
    1. 1.1The four original qualities of matter (hot, cold, wet, and dry) recognized by Aristotle, from which other qualities were held to derive.
      • ‘Given the fundamental or "primary" qualities, which come in two pairs of opposites, viz., hot/cold and moist/dry, there are four elements out of which all minerals are composed, each having its own set proportion of elements; and from the minerals all other corporeal entities in general are formed.’
      • ‘At about the same time, four primary qualities were defined - hot and cold, wet and dry - which also made up a tetrad of opposites, as did the four blood types of Aristotle and the four humours of Hippocrates.’
      • ‘A central component of the humoral theory of the body, temperament (‘crasis’ in Greek) denoted the particular balance of the four primary qualities - hot, wet, cold, and dry - characteristic of a given individual in a healthy condition.’