NO SUCH THING AS COLD. JUST AN ABSENCE OF HEAT

pcurls

i have a friend who has a first class honours degree in philosophy a masters in god knows what and a phd in i know everything

when i put this to her she was stumped.

i'd like to get some thoughts on it.

Turtwig

eh philosophy?

Um, as far as I know Cold is real, after all you can feel it : so it MUST be real! (Ok not really )

It may be an absence of heat, but what does it matter if we describe a word as meaning so. We could just have easily have chosen to define heat as the absence of cold, but we chose not to.

Personally, I prefer saying "I'm Cold" to "I've got less heat than normal".
Also in terms of temperature, 'cold' is certainly real in my view.:)

greyed

Hot or cold is just a matter of degree, i.e. the degree of activity in the molecules of an object. Hot and cold are simply names given to the extremes by humans. Our perception of something does not make it absolute, so we can not say one or the other exist or do not exist on a universal scale. Similarly with time. As far as our perception goes, at what point does heat become absent? Again, a matter of degree that will vary from person to person, but as far as our subjective reality goes the absence of one state is a state in itself, this is the relationship between all extremes, so for our human purposes, both hot and cold exist.

Thats how I see it at least...

28064212

Pretty nonsensical question, since the definition of the terms are highly changeable. Many definitions would say that cold is the absence of heat. In a scientific context, heat is just a scale starting at absolute zero, so no, there is no 'cold', but things can be colder than other things, it's a relative term.

Heat is itself an arbitrary label, there's no reason you can't turn the 'heat scale' upside down and have absolute zero as the highest point, and measure things by how cold they are. In that case, there would be no such thing as 'heat', just an absence of cold

Goduznt Xzst

she probably wasn't stumped. Rather she realized the question is irrelevant.

You could equally say there is no evil, only the absence of good, or there is no dark only the absence of light, or there is no death only the absence of life... yadda yadda.

You are really getting into discussing arbitrary human definitions that apply subjective context to objective realities. The discussion is pointless due to its arbitrary nature, it is better to just accept the current human constructs that define our reality, rather than claiming those constructs are wrong, when they can be neither.

Turtwig

Goduznt Xzst wrote: »

...there is no dark only the absence of light...

Ahh Dark Sucker Theory, intriguing stuff :rolleyes:

maddogcollins

there is no such thing as heat, just an absense of cold!not really a philosophical statement!

greyed

maddogcollins wrote: »

there is no such thing as heat, just an absense of cold!not really a philosophical statement!

Well, it examines our perception of the universe, how is this not philosophical?

Joe1919

pcurls wrote: »

i have a friend who has a first class honours degree in philosophy a masters in god knows what and a phd in i know everything

when i put this to her she was stumped.

i'd like to get some thoughts on it.

Actually this was an important philosophical question during medieval times.
Thomas Aquinas argued that 'blindness' was not a 'being' but just the lack of sight.
I think, as one of the replies also noted that it was to do with trying to give an explanation to 'evil', Aquinas saw 'evil' a simply a lack of perfection or goodness.

Its still an important question in metaphysics in terms of the 'unity of opposites'.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_of_opposites
We always see Being in contrast with its 'non-being'.

Also postmodern writers have written a lot about 'binary opposition'.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_opposition
One side of the binary pair is always thought by humans to be more privilaged than the other. e.g. Good/evil.... Male/female.... White/black..........

Of course, in Chinese philosophy, we have the concept of Yin & Yang
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang

Mesoscopic

'There is no such thing as cold just an absence of heat. '

This is essentially correct. Temperature is just a quantification of the relative amounts of thermal (kinetic) energy in materials.

We are able to measure the amount of kinetic movement or heat in materials by temperature If we extrapolate the amount of movement until there is no movement, we reach a condition called absolute zero. This is -273C. At that point there is a complete absence of heat. Everything with more energy than that contains more or less heat energy.

So physically, there is no such thing as cold, just an absence of heat.

pcurls

Mesoscopic wrote: »

'There is no such thing as cold just an absence of heat. '

This is essentially correct. Temperature is just a quantification of the relative amounts of thermal (kinetic) energy in materials.

We are able to measure the amount of kinetic movement or heat in materials by temperature If we extrapolate the amount of movement until there is no movement, we reach a condition called absolute zero. This is -273C. At that point there is a complete absence of heat. Everything with more energy than that contains more or less heat energy.

So physically, there is no such thing as cold, just an absence of heat.

thanks:D

marko91

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS HEAT, JUST THE ABSENCE OF COLD;)


/thread

CrinkElite

a child's got more bones than a grownup's got!


("God is dead" - Nietzchse
"Nietzchse is dead" - God).. love it!

orestes

This is going nowhere. Locked.