My SO said the above statement and gave me an explanation “Cold is the absence of heat or energy”, it does make sense however in my head it is like saying (in very simplistic terms) “the countryside is the absence of a city” and that is just a ridiculous statement.
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It’s fine in terms of most physics, there is no cold, just absolute 0 and heat.
In terms of humans though there is obviously cold and hot but it’s not simple and not fully understood, we are thought to have 2 types of thermoreceptors, warm and cold, which respond to innocous warming or cooling and then pain receptors which respond to extreme temperatures hot or cold. But we don’t simply respond to actual temperature but rather heat flow so 20C water will feel cold while 20C air doesn’t because it conducts vastly more heat, a windy day feels colder because the moving air cools you down more, and touching a 70C piece of metal will feel painfully hot but a 2000C ceramic heatshield won’t because it transfers less heat.
NB it’s not that heat transfer out of the body feels cold and heat transfer in feels hot, 34C air feels hot, but it’s still cooler than your core so you are pumping heat out, just not as easily as the body is comfortable with so it feels hot.
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