Humans (like most living things) like to put things in boxes to make navigating their environment simpler. Temperatures aren’t really opposites because they’re on a continuum, but we talk about hot and cold as opposites to bring order to environmental navigation. The same with presence and absence of light and bright/dark. So, extending this logic, the opposite of cat is the absence of cat, but that doesn’t really make sense. If you cut a cat in half, are you halfway on a continuum from cat to the opposite of cat? If the cat is whole but has died, is it cat, opposite of cat, something else entirely? I have no idea, and no one else really does either. Brains are weird.
What would be the opposite of any mammal? A carrot? A brick? A slime mold?
Does everything actually have an “opposite”?
I’d say everything has several opposites, each in a different aspect.
Humans (like most living things) like to put things in boxes to make navigating their environment simpler. Temperatures aren’t really opposites because they’re on a continuum, but we talk about hot and cold as opposites to bring order to environmental navigation. The same with presence and absence of light and bright/dark. So, extending this logic, the opposite of cat is the absence of cat, but that doesn’t really make sense. If you cut a cat in half, are you halfway on a continuum from cat to the opposite of cat? If the cat is whole but has died, is it cat, opposite of cat, something else entirely? I have no idea, and no one else really does either. Brains are weird.
Sounds like the Schrodinger’s cat theory!
Apart from involving cats, it really doesn’t.
If we’re following bizzaro world logic, the opposite of anything is the version that’s stupid, or if you’re stupid, then smart.
I imagine bizarro me is teaching physics in a prestigious university.