The Thoughts Of Locke In Systemic Functional Linguistics [1]

Russell (1961: 585):

Not only Locke's valid opinions, but even his errors, were useful in practice.  Take, for example, his doctrine as to primary and secondary qualities.  The primary qualities are defined as those that are inseparable from the body, and are enumerated as solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number.  The secondary qualities are all the rest: colours, sounds, smells, etc.  The primary qualities, he maintains, are actually in bodies; the secondary qualities, on the contrary, are only in the percipient.  Without the eye, there would be no colours; without the ears, no sounds, and so on.  For Locke's view as to secondary qualities there are good grounds — jaundice, blue spectacles, etc.  But Berkeley pointed out that the same arguments apply to primary qualities.  Ever since Berkeley, Locke's dualism on this point has been philosophically out of date.  Nevertheless, it dominated practical physics until the rise of quantum theory in our own day.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics, both bodies and whatever qualities we ascribe to them are construals of experience as ideational meaning.