QUALITY

, denotes generally the property or affection of some being, by which it affects our senses in a certain way, &c.

Sensible Qualities are such as are the more immediate object of the senses: as figure, taste, colour, smell, hardness, &c.

Occult Qualities, among the Ancients, were such as did not admit of a rational solution in their way.

Dr. Keil demonstrates, that every Quality which is propagated in orbem, such as light, heat, cold, odour, &c, has its efficacy or intensity either increased, or decreased, in a duplicate ratio of the distances from the centre of radiation inversely. So at double the distance from the earth's centre, or from a luminous or hot body, the weight or light or heat, is but a 4th part; and at 3 times the distance, they are 9 times less, or a 9th part, &c.

Sir Isaac Newton lays it down as one of the rules of philosophizing, that those Qualities of bodies that are incapable of being intended and remitted, and which are found to obtain in all bodies upon which the experiment could ever be tried, are to be esteemed universal Qualities of all bodies.

Quality of Curvature, in the higher geometry, is used to signify its form, as it is more or less inequable, or as it is varied more or less in its progress through different parts of the curve. Newton's Method of Fluxions, pa. 75; and Maclaurin's Fluxions, art. 369.