If a tree falls when no one is around, did it make a sound?

[meemojaded]

Cliche question - I know, and not entirely sure I'm posting this in the right place, but... if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, did it in fact make a sound? I was just recently re-introduced to this question again, and well... it got me pondering again :P... I mean firstly, how do you define sound? Do you define it as what is actually heard?

See, I define it as a pressure wave that has the potential to be heard. Afterall, sound has a speed regardless of whether it is heard or not, right? Also, the sound is made a moment before one hears it, not when it is heard. Otherwise if two people hear it, it would be making two sounds.

So i'd have to say, yes it makes a sound, does it not?? I'd be really interested to see what other people's take on this is, as it seems to be a pretty common/cliche question, and yet, still one which is quite frequently the topic of debate among individuals.

[jermdogg]

It does create a sound. Just because no body is around to hear it, doesnt neccaserly mean it wont create a sound. Just because we didnt hear it doesnt mean anything else living in the woods heard it or saw it, the lack of human presense doesnt null physics or sound.

[newyear]

Meemojaded, I have seen this question before, it must be one that teachers or professors like to field and see what results.

I would suggest you make a simple experiment with a tape recorder, and listen to the results.

[gotterdammerung]

I agree that the tree creates pressure waves which have the potential to be heard(to make a sound).

The process of one hearing a sound requires two things. First, to create the sound waves (sound potential), and secondly for someone to interpret the sound waves as a noise. Sound (or any product of our senses) exists only because we perceive it as such. Pressure waves on the other hand exist universally, they will always exist regardless of an observer, but there are countless pressure waves created every instance around each of us that we don't recognize as sound (without instrumentation anyway). It's only when the pressure waves are within a very specific range that we can interpret them as sound. We can't hear a dog whistle but dogs obviously can, so a dog whistle makes a sound for a dog, but not for us. So does a dog whistle make a sound? Only if there is one affected by it, that interprets the sound waves as a noise. If a bat was in the forest when the tree fell and perceived the sound as bats do, while not technically hearing it, the bat would interpret the sound waves as a sensory experience which we can only relate to our sense of sight.

You could even go one step further and say that since each sensory experience is incommunicable (describe any sensory experience to someone who has never had it) we might all have a completely different interpretation of sound waves; therefor the tree would only ever make a sound if the person who first experienced and coined the term "sound" was there to perceive it exactly as he or she does.

[meemojaded]

Ok.. Firstly I actually agree with the thought you presented there Gotterdammerung, that we might all have a completely different interpretation of sound waves. And in fact, come to think of it, we probably do. But still, regardless of how the sound is interpreted, it is still being received. So therefore, if you choose to define sound as a pressure wave which only exists if it is in fact received by a living thing, then in the case of the bat, the sound still exists no matter how he interprets it. See what I was getting at before however, was that sound(along with other types of wave transmissions) consists of potential and kinetic energy. So this sound wave’s energy in both forms, is still present whether it is actually heard or not. There is in my opinion, a difference between a sound being omitted, and someone receiving and interpreting(hearing) that sound. Sound is the actual pressure wave which has been released, whereas hearing is us receiving it. I mean the air still vibrates whether one is around to witness it or not. Sound is not created by our perception of it.

[gotterdammerung]

Lets get semantic! Sound is defined as such by http://www.dictionary.com:

1. the sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing by vibrations transmitted through the air or other medium.
2. mechanical vibrations transmitted through an elastic medium, traveling in air at a speed of approximately 1087 ft. (331 m) per second at sea level.

So, Meemojaded, if one considers the second point to be the absolute definition of sound your statement that sound is not created by our perception of mechanical waves holds true, ergo the falling tree does make a sound, even if no one is around to hear it.

I imagine sound as it's defined in the first point, therefor the bat would not "hear" the tree falling (or anything else for that matter), and if no one, capable of hearing, was present to perceive the mechanical waves as a sound the tree would not have made so much as a peep (though it did try, by exuding mechanical waves).

The question now is not whether or not the tree makes a sound (we know the answer depending on our definition of sound), but rather which is a better definition of sound? I also think that this conversation has strayed from the thoughts the question was originally intended to provoke. If everyone in the world went to sleep at the exact same time would the universe cease to exist as it does until someone wakes up, à la a "softened" Descartes perspective(we think, therefor we are)?

[DarrenLO]

Some physicists (those who hold to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics) would say that the tree does not exist if there is nobody there to see it!

Darren

[meemojaded]

Yes I suppose it does all boil down in the end to how we choose to define sound as it is yet another concept which has become subject for debate due to the fact it has no fixed definition. So ok then, even if we do choose to define sound as the first definition there.. What about deaf people? The definition for these individuals is pretty fixed and concrete, correct? They cannot hear, but research shows that people born deaf process sound vibrations in the same part of the brain that is normally used only for hearing. So they are in fact still processing these sound waves just as we are, just not hearing or perceiving them as we do. They are still, as the definition you presented states, experiencing “the sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing by vibrations transmitted through the air or other medium”. With both definitions, there is a difference between sound itself and actually hearing it, so the definition we choose to accept as our basis for the understanding of what sound in fact actually is, is irrelevant. The sound the tree makes still exists if no one is around to witness it(and I also believe the tree still exists in general if no on is around to see it by the way!) The sound waves are still making the same vibrations even if no one is actually receiving and interpreting them.

[gotterdammerung]

Copenhagen Interpretation! That's what I was thinking about. Softened Descartes perspective? Hehe, not quite on the point. Thanks Darren.

Alright, the first definition states that a sound doesn't exist until it produces a sensation. To be received and processed is nothing if it cannot be sensed. If you wanted to get reaalllly technical, I suppose it's possible that the unheard noise while being processed would eventually, via chaos theory, be indirectly responsible for somehow altering how some other sense is processed and received, and therefor be sensed... though you wouldn't be aware that any impact was made unless you could reverse time and experience the exact same sensory experience without the impact and make a distinction between the two, practically identical stimuli. Still though, one would experience the altercation whether they were aware of it or not, and therefor would have technically perceived the sound wave even if they are completely incapable of hearing.

Try and prove that in the absence of all observation the tree would still exist... I dare ya!

[capslockf9]

Lets get semantic! Sound is defined as such by http://www.dictionary.com:

1. the sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing by vibrations transmitted through the air or other medium.
2. mechanical vibrations transmitted through an elastic medium, traveling in air at a speed of approximately 1087 ft. (331 m) per second at sea level.

So, Meemojaded, if one considers the second point to be the absolute definition of sound your statement that sound is not created by our perception of mechanical waves holds true, ergo the falling tree does make a sound, even if no one is around to hear it.

I imagine sound as it's defined in the first point, therefor the bat would not "hear" the tree falling (or anything else for that matter), and if no one, capable of hearing, was present to perceive the mechanical waves as a sound the tree would not have made so much as a peep (though it did try, by exuding mechanical waves).

The question now is not whether or not the tree makes a sound (we know the answer depending on our definition of sound), but rather which is a better definition of sound? I also think that this conversation has strayed from the thoughts the question was originally intended to provoke. If everyone in the world went to sleep at the exact same time would the universe cease to exist as it does until someone wakes up, à la a "softened" Descartes perspective(we think, therefor we are)?

...It is a shock wave outside the head.
...It is a sound"wave" in the head. I say "wave" becuase in the brain everything is some kind of electrical activity. The brain produce like a virtual reality from real world stimuli.
...Same as there is no color outside the head. There is no smell outside the head.

[PeSla]

capslockf9 said:

Same as there is no color outside the head. There is no smell outside the head.

There are countless colors and scents, some we have not imagined, outside our heads and in the moment the sound observed or not.


gotterdammerung said:

Try to prove that in the absence of all observation the tree would still exist... I dare ya!

Perhaps in the abscence of all observation we can prove the tree would not exist? Define all.

Maybe, justs maybe if as in some Hindu ideas there are as many universes and gods as the ants, in going around the mental and material aspects of infinity we only see one side of the equations. To prove it exists or not from some higher unified viewpoint, universal or particular or evolving does it All, so it does so prove. QED

[capslockf9]

There are countless colors and scents, some we have not imagined, outside our heads and in the moment the sound observed or not.


gotterdammerung said:

Try to prove that in the absence of all observation the tree would still exist... I dare ya!

Perhaps in the abscence of all observation we can prove the tree would not exist? Define all.

Maybe, justs maybe if as in some Hindu ideas there are as many universes and gods as the ants, in going around the mental and material aspects of infinity we only see one side of the equations. To prove it exists or not from some higher unified viewpoint, universal or particular or evolving does it All, so it does so prove. QED

...Yes-See the following: http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/4/14
...? I do know that everything is a colorless cloud of electrons bouncing,refracting , or absorbing electro-magnetic waves. the wave enters our eye and it is here where we make color.

[Hunter22]

In fact the tree probably does produce a sound. It also produces several other things if it can produce sound. We are relying on our perception largely in this category and if we can believe that it produces a sound why couldn't a different being with an inverted perception taste something if a tree falls or percept it in a different way. When confronting things like this question we have to realize that in fact we may be the only being that perceives a certain thing a certain way. So a better question would be, if a tree falls in the forest and many are around than what senses does it or could it provoke?

[meemojaded]

Hunter22, I liked that question and addition to the thread there by the way! Yes, the tree falling is subject to different being's responses of it, and more to the point, how they percieve this and what senses are present and provoked during that time. So how about an insect or an earthworm then?(basically something which has felt or somehow recieved the sound/pressure waves omitted - or whatever you choose to call them, but which doesn't have any self awareness itself... and furthermore, any consious knowledge of what it has in fact just perceieved in it's own unique way??)

[capslockf9]

If everyone in the world went to sleep at the exact same time would the universe cease to exist ...

...In our present state of evolution the brain perceives a limited amount of reality.
...The stimuli that the brain is able to interpret is not all the stimuli avaliable.
...And I can garuantee you this is something else ou there. We will evolve and see.

[PeSla]

capslockf9,

thanks for the url, sorry I didnt get right back to you.

I do know that everything is a colorless cloud of electrons bouncing,refracting , or absorbing electro-magnetic waves. the wave enters our eye and it is here where we make color.

There may be many things wrong with this and with the conclusions of those thought experiments in the artice url too. Color of course seems to have a physical basis in the eye and some creatures can see a wider range and systems of color than we do as the bird who see it as space rather than a triangle of three primaries. But in any case the phenomenon of color is a quasi-realism in that we see color with our minds, and then we migh say there is something beyond that by quantum ideas as paranormal. In general I do not hold quantum mysticism as a viable ground for physics. Despite its dramatic appeal.

If ideas as if a mind of God can hear it all as sort of an infinite perceptor of some quantum event or even see all determined events in say a multiverse (thus he the finite and we the infinite) that is a unity of the reality of being if we accept the totality of our middle scale of things, then just as we could create a universe we could not see nor hear as if a micro-black hole in a particle accelerator then where is the objective reality there that has the force of explosion and sound of a universe and yet we and even god remains deaf to it - how can we know if it exists if we have to verify such remote and ultimate inequalities which never return even in some garbled form to the identity of all the rotations and configurations?
So the answer is that there are even deeper things, not so much to think of them as hidden variables but internal and hidden symmetries which by the way we do not find them going invisible even if the whole world were in a coma let alone asleep, dreams may have a deeper meaning than we suspect just as there are deeper physics on the horizon than the suposed unitfication of the realativistic and quantum worlds and their styles of observation and their correspondence. The Bell idea is after all one of information but this quantum information (or equivalent quantum meaning) is only a small start to a deeper picture. Having said this that I am not so sure I just havent pushed the paradoxes another level away rather than answering them. But one thing for sure these inequalities do have a profound effect on the ordering of things like the genes and chromosome integrity as we age and evolve and also in that they connect to our mind.


The mind in theory can percieve an unlimited amount of reality albeit sometimes garbled after the multiple physical and entanglement exchanges of information which btw only exists as useful if the original idea is not just a mere repitition of the same thing or is a total random thing, the dna seems to be read fractally (in a sense quantum can be seen as fractional dimensionality but where is the chaos science at the quantum level?) This ordering of evolving things is a process or arrow of time too.


How is it that we age, can slow or stop it, but cannot by existing ideas revese it? and that like a new deal of cards each successive generation starts clean with a full deck without the accumulated errors (there are exceptions of course even in the same bloodlines)?

This is the age old question of what is finite and infinite in the universe or of the universe. It introduces the idea of it taking more than one complete spin to come back to some original position which implies that perhaps there are substantial reasons for accepting the higher dimensional string theories.

If you want we can scale this up in discussion to some detail, but it seems all this is in the background for so long now here and with the help of new faces and voices, but who really hears?

[capslockf9]

capslockf9,

thanks for the url, sorry I didnt get right back to you.

I do know that everything is a colorless cloud of electrons bouncing,refracting , or absorbing electro-magnetic waves. the wave enters our eye and it is here where we make color.

There may be many things wrong with this and with the conclusions of those thought experiments in the artice url too. Color of course seems to have a physical basis in the eye and some creatures can see a wider range and systems of color than we do as the bird who see it as space rather than a triangle of three primaries. But in any case the phenomenon of color is a quasi-realism in that we see color with our minds, and then we migh say there is something beyond that by quantum ideas as paranormal. In general I do not hold quantum mysticism as a viable ground for physics. Despite its dramatic appeal.

If ideas as if a mind of God can hear it all as sort of an infinite perceptor of some quantum event or even see all determined events in say a multiverse (thus he the finite and we the infinite) that is a unity of the reality of being if we accept the totality of our middle scale of things, then just as we could create a universe we could not see nor hear as if a micro-black hole in a particle accelerator then where is the objective reality there that has the force of explosion and sound of a universe and yet we and even god remains deaf to it - how can we know if it exists if we have to verify such remote and ultimate inequalities which never return even in some garbled form to the identity of all the rotations and configurations?
So the answer is that there are even deeper things, not so much to think of them as hidden variables but internal and hidden symmetries which by the way we do not find them going invisible even if the whole world were in a coma let alone asleep, dreams may have a deeper meaning than we suspect just as there are deeper physics on the horizon than the suposed unitfication of the realativistic and quantum worlds and their styles of observation and their correspondence. The Bell idea is after all one of information but this quantum information (or equivalent quantum meaning) is only a small start to a deeper picture. Having said this that I am not so sure I just havent pushed the paradoxes another level away rather than answering them. But one thing for sure these inequalities do have a profound effect on the ordering of things like the genes and chromosome integrity as we age and evolve and also in that they connect to our mind.


The mind in theory can percieve an unlimited amount of reality albeit sometimes garbled after the multiple physical and entanglement exchanges of information which btw only exists as useful if the original idea is not just a mere repitition of the same thing or is a total random thing, the dna seems to be read fractally (in a sense quantum can be seen as fractional dimensionality but where is the chaos science at the quantum level?) This ordering of evolving things is a process or arrow of time too.


How is it that we age, can slow or stop it, but cannot by existing ideas revese it? and that like a new deal of cards each successive generation starts clean with a full deck without the accumulated errors (there are exceptions of course even in the same bloodlines)?

This is the age old question of what is finite and infinite in the universe or of the universe. It introduces the idea of it taking more than one complete spin to come back to some original position which implies that perhaps there are substantial reasons for accepting the higher dimensional string theories.

If you want we can scale this up in discussion to some detail, but it seems all this is in the background for so long now here and with the help of new faces and voices, but who really hears?

...I am not in hurry . so please take your time.
...This topic is very interesting. But I am not a scientist.
...Quantum physics seem to take us closer to figuring out what we are. Everything seems to be some kind resonance. Matter does not exist as most think that it does- a solid substance. There are an unlimited stimuli in our invironment but our evolutionary stage of development has not produced a brain matter with the receptive ability to sense more.
... the following is even more heritical- DNA is not the blue print but a receiver of information. What makes apple trees , lizard , and/or people is information that some how the dna is tuned to receive.

[Glen]

The question, which is called a zen koan, does not call for a scientific answer. In fact, it is designed to exhaust your linear way of arriving at an answer. To ask: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, is like asking: If a man screams in a room full of people and no one is there to hear him, will he make a sound. The correct answer, of which there are many, is this: your question makes no sense; I'm afraid you'll have to make yourself more clear. Yes, clear, so that there is nothing between you and the trees. Leave the laboratory and get yourself out to the woods.

[PeSla]

Glen,

Contrary to what many believe there are deeper answers of which will be revealed- let us not submit to the authority of those who appear wise by teaching the lesson that there are no such answers-some of them are wise but most are selling themselves for postion in the system they sell.

You can take the scientist out of the woods but you cannot take the woods out of the scientist and it is perhaps best we cannot- but as to who hears the screams outside the cave of the laboratory or calls in the wild philosophy stays aloof as to if it ultimately matters.
You seem to have the beginnings of some fine contemplations- we have all been there if we so admit it and so should symphasize and lend a hand up rather than a kick down into the larval filled bottomless pit of those struggiling with identity and authenticity. Is there as you ask good and evil, or only nothing and degrees of the good? Perhaps we should do more philisiophy before we apply it to theology and science,

capslockf9,
Yes, we have the time and we are closer, to dna and quantum things, and they are but a steppingstone.

[DD]

As a wiseman once stated, "Though no one is in the woods to hear it, when a tree falls it still makes a sound." Yes, we exist.

[SmallMind]

This conundrum points to what has been proposed as metaphysics, along with the multiple-use characteristic of the common language. That is, 'a tree' can signify a real tree or an object defined by its properties (an instance of a class). From what is given, nothing is known about the real tree except what can be inferrred conditionally from what happens when trees fall. That is, if it fell, we have no reason to believe it did not make a noise. This means that no tree has yet been observed to fall without making a noise. It is assumed to hold until one is observed to do otherwise.

[Glen]

We breathe out carbon dioxide, and breathe in oxygen. The trees breathe in carbon dioxide, and breathe out oxygen. Can you imagine a relationship more intimate than that (Galatomic, don't; you can think it; you just can't say it)? The perceived disconnection between the tree and yourself is an error; it could be said that the tree is an extention of your lungs. Actually, there is nothing but relationship. Remove yourself from some of them and you may cease to exist here.

So, in answer the the question: If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?, I would have to say that one answer is in the form of a question, which is: If a man screams in a room full of people, and no one is there to hear him, will he make a sound? It's hard to get through the day without offending someone, or a even a tree. He who hath an ear, let him ...

[OB Juan]

If a man says something in a forest where there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?

[Glen]

OB Juan,

Absolutely. That's because, sooner or later, the man goes back to civilization and the woman will see what he has said written all over his face. This is both a great mystery and a fact, and there is no escaping it.

[Schmungles]

Yes, it does make a sound. I've never understood why this question is used to spur debate. Falling trees create sound, case closed.

[PeSla]

OB

It is the silent ladies that have the deeper mystery, so full of dark matters and its creativity.

If the sound were so intense it caused pain and no one could hear it at such a high frequency even if near it would one feel the pain if he was not in some medium near the falling tree?

And if we recorded the sound and played it backwards a million miles away and slowed it down to where we could hear it- but we could not although we could feel the pressure and perhaps the pain.

The other side of silence and the other side of light love blind to each other those who seek to blend together in dreams of their merger with qualities hidden and overt, a space that takes forever to reach but is there at the touch no matter how far away the song and signal.

The ocean of woman is deep and wide, of may the directed ray is narrow and can span to anywhere.

But if the sky was big enough and sound had its way would it not eventually vanish into chaos before anyone could see it as a signal? Even so if at the last whisper we felt a presence- well, beyond the noise of a distant song that actually helps us hear there is the fact that even someone nearby will hear half of what vibrates on his eardrums. For it is enough to sing a counter song to mask your own as well to make the music together so as to mask the silences in each other.

This is an important question of where you are and how you touch thoughts and the world- do you hear me? do you? Do you hear the notes and words beneath the last whisphers vanished- hear the motion of the stars and of the spin of space itself? How loud the eternal silence before and after the tree fall.

Drink deeply then of that moment of touch and sight between your biased choice of the water or the wave. For silence is faster than the sound and light and touches nowhere and everywhere. As long as you are in the sea of life and or not, that is as long as you hear your roots grow and forsee your fall.

Can you take back the event of fall, wish not to address the obtaining of love thru obsticles as well to wish away her who comes to your bed in dreams you reject and awaken from, yet wish also that you had never met- take the silence and the light back? Perhaps, if you can muse over the falling tree and sound and the release of pain in its experienced touching. Not all the world is without some universal nor not all the existential motion is summed up as the secrets in the boughs explode. Gaping mouths of wisdom, you face anew the cradle song.

[EyesOnly]

Though, do not forget, Pesla, (and all those reading this philosophical debate) that our being in the state of observation may very well change the state in which all exists. Including color, sound, and the the methods we measure them in. Especially we start speaking on terms of quantum locality of individual real-metric state. Being that the existance of atoms and subatomic particles may very well be because we wish to observe the universe with in those constraints and the universe, due to quantum entanglement, has obliged us with this futile view of what we believe to be the underlying world that makes up our every day world. Where in actuality, the universe may not even act in such simplistic and relativistic style and hide away it's true nature and structure from what we deam observable.

[PeSla]

I get your subtle point here EyesOnly, especially what may be hidden from us in our subjective world of deep consciousness. But I will have more to say on this question as to if such realms can touch on the others or not, or some compromise of both of them. I will start a thread called Vital Illusions in metaphysics and epistemology. I think perhaps there can be a foundation for rational ethics where all is not uncertain and arbitrary which still may not need the idea of say a concept of an arbitrary god or arbitrary physics of the universe. Who knows what confluences of the rivers at the end of summer has streams of algae green next to the colder flow of muddy waters.

We gaze down deeply into the dammed and man-made lake still clear as we try to contain nature in the flood plane of the river. And what do we see some few meters under the surface but the tops of branching and once living trees.

[cruelsuit]

This is probably just a case of a shifting definition.

The word "sound" can mean the physical wave itself or the phenomenon of the interaction with auditory apparatus, the perception of the wave.

Two distinct concepts with one word designating them both.

There is no mystery, no koan, merely a semantic glitch.

[goingtothedogs]

I personally have no trouble with this one. Sound is a vibrating air wave. It's a physical description. A listener is beside the point.

But how about a variation on the theme? I know my opinion of the answer but I'll be interested to see anyone else's comments

Is a rose still red if there is no-one to see it?