Do Cold and Darkness Really Exist?

Not many people - and there was only one Albert Einstein - would be able to comprehend let alone articulate this argument. I had a few "ahhhh" moments reading through...

It doesn't surprise me in the least that there was religious discussion...from what little I've read of Einstein, he encouraged and had a curiosity of that which was greater than man... This is actually one of my favorite quotes..

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity."

Even just this snippet of the story was a great read...Mind sharing the the link to the full story?

Einsteins professors certainly would've had to put their A Game on when they were teaching him

Michael - we don't put labels on things to "polarize" them. We label things to make communicating about them simple. "cold", "dark", - they are just easy ways to describe perceptions we have - and those perceptions do exist. Lack of light may not exist as the same entity that the word "dark" describes, but we do see a lack of light and so we have made a label to communicate that perception.

We also have an inference system by which we make "bridging assumptions". These assumptions allow us to infer what someone is saying without them having to run down the whole scientific schemata every time we speak. Communication would be very difficult without these assumptions. We use this ability to translate the tags into meaning -- can you imagine having to describe the whole scientific schematic every time we wanted to say "it's cold" to be understood?

Just based on principle alone, cold and darkness, in theory, don't exist. Let's look at the two.

Cold is just a lack of heat. You cannot cool anything down as strange as that sounds. That's how air conditioners work. First, they take out humidity in the air which makes it cooler. Then the cool air pulls heat from the air. It "seems" to cool, but it's actually just pulling heat out of the air. Anything cold will pull heat from a surrounding source until it reaches an equilibrium to the surrounding ambient temperature. That's also why if you sleep on a cold water bed or the ground, it pulls heat from your body. This also is dangerous and can possibly kill you.

Next, we look at darkness. Darkness is just a lack of light. Once light is not emitted anywhere nearby and cannot be reflected, there's darkness.

So in essence, cold and dark don't exist although, semantically, you can experience dark. So philosophically and also in the case of cold, you can measure it scientifically. Neither exists on its own merit and neither are created, so to speak. So, you decide whether there is actually cold and dark.

The points are correct, but I rather say "It's dark" then "There's an absence of light". My wife would have me committed. LOL

I disagree with Einstein. "Cold" and "dark" are just relative terms. You'd think the guy that came up with the formula for relativity would understand.

So what's the bottom point?

I think the student was correct because cold exists in absence of a source of heat.
On the other hand cold exist in the absence of light.If you look it in another way both light and heat have their sources as opposed to cold and darkness which have no sources.

Ask any of the homeless....they will tell you.

Must be really nice to be able to debate it.

Add to the list of things that don't exist:

. . . Time

(It is man-made, but doesn't really exist... )

GT

That coldness is not a primary quality has been known for 100s of years.

Imagine 3 buckets of water, one is iced-water, another is just off the boil and the third is room temperature. If Smith puts his hand in the iced-water and then in the room temperature bucket he will say the water is warm. However, if Jones puts his hand in the water that is just off the boil and then in the room temperature bucket he will say that this water is cool.

Since the same water can not be both warm and cool at the same time 'coldness' can not be a primary quality of the water.

Similarly, you may rub your finger against a table-top and say that it is flat however a microscopic insect will experience the same table-top as a mountain range. The same thing can't be both flat and mountainous. These qualities exist as ideas not as qualities belonging to matter.

Sartre pointed out that when he enters a restaurant looking for Pierre (who he expects to find but doesn't because Pierre is actually at home) he experiences the absence of his friend, the nothingness. This nothingness exists, as an idea.

The same goes for love, morality, memories, dreams, sound etc.

Something doesn't have to be extended in space to exist.

I wish I could play Einstein with my professor way back then...