It's Cold Out There!

There is no such thing as cold. Cold is not a thing or a force or a property that exists and is measurable in its own right—it’s simply the absence of heat. Cooling is thus the sensation of loss as heat is transferred elsewhere. But that understanding is relatively recent: generations of scientists, including many of the big names—Leonardo da Vinci, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton—all tried, and failed to establish where cold comes from. Human control of cold is even more recent. Mechanical cooling—refrigeration produced by human artifice, as opposed to the natural chill offered by weather-dependent snow and ice—wasn’t achieved until the mid-1700s, it wasn’t commercialized until the late 1800s, and it wasn’t domesticated until the 1920s.

Yet, even in that brief span, cold has transformed the world. Refrigeration has reshaped what we eat, where it’s grown, and what it tastes like, while also redesigning our homes and cities, and remaking our cuisine and health. Air-conditioning has rearranged demography, while removing the rhythm of the seasons. Cold’s power to expand time while compressing space is existential: on the one hand, cryogenic medicine offers the promise of eternal life; on the other, the greenhouse gases emitted in order to maintain our ever-expanding artificial cryosphere are a principal culprit in the disappearance of Earth’s polar regions and glaciers. In this Salon, we will confront the challenges and comforts of cold.

Some of the questions that we ask include: What are ice’s delights—and costs? Is cold essential, or simply desirable? What does cold make possible, and what might its absence—a world in no natural ice remains—resemble? Can we chill sustainably? And can rethinking our relationship with cold help us re-make our food system, redesign the built environment, and restore Earth’s atmosphere?

This Salon took place on January 27th, 2025.