Tree falling

[BertiWooster]

I'll park this question here.

If a tree falls to the ground does it make a sound if there is no one about to hear it ?

[Jumbuck]

Define what you mean by a sound.

[sophie_1003]

sound is a vibration of air molecules so yes it does

[heathfield]

I was once walking through a wood when a tree next to me fell over.

I didn't hear a thing! ;0)

[squarebear]

Yes of course it does. Just because no-one hears it doesn't mean it doesn't make a sound. Why would you think it wouldn't make a noise?

[sara3]

if I'd given birth on my own, I wouldn't have made a sound.

I trust that clears things up for you :o)

[ChuckFickens]

If a man is alone in a forest and says something, is he still wrong if a woman isn't there to hear him?

[another-view]

Yes it makes a sound. A tree falling with someone observing will make a sound. The person observing has no effect on the incident and so nothing will change if the person has been removed.

[sara3]

Chuck, yes.. obviously.

[TTG]

Yes it will make a sound. To be aware it fell though, you'd have to see it laying on the ground in a fallen state!

[scotman]

If the tree falls it will create vibrations in the surrounding air and through the ground.
It will be 'heard' only by any creatures who have a hearing system capable of responding to the frequencies present. The tree does not possess any inherent 'noise-making' capacity.

[emeritus]

Heres some light reading Berti

http://en.wikipedia.o...ree_falls_in_a_forest

[vascop]

TTG
I've never seen a tree laying on the ground - is that so that its eggs don't break? I've seen a tree lying on the ground though.

[fredpuli47]

'Lay' for ' lie', used intransitively ;' I was just laying there, minding my own business'; was once a standard verb for 'lie' .It was so for a long while, from the Middle Ages and is still said in some parts of Britain.

[BertiWooster]

Emerutis - indeed light reading

I was looking at the question from the Philosophical angle
it is interesting to look at it both from the Philosophical and metaphysical aspect

Interesting paras from the piece, below

'' George Berkeley was an Irish philosopher who created and promoted a theory he called "immaterialism" later referred to as "subjective idealism". His dictum was "Esse est percipi" - "To be is to be perceived".[1] He talked of objects ceasing to exist once there was nobody around to perceive them. In his work, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, he proposes, "But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park [. . .] and nobody by to perceive them. [...] The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees therefore are in the garden [. . .] no longer than while there is somebody by to perceive them."[

[BertiWooster]

cont..

'' The production of sound requires 3 things: A source, a medium, and a receiver. The source, through vibrations called "compression" and "rarefraction", creates a series of pressure waves that vary in frequency and amplitude. These pressure waves propagate through various mediums including water, air and solids. The receiver collects and converts these pressure waves into electrical impulses. If you remove any of the 3 requirements for sound, there is no sound.''

''In the vacuum of outer space there is no means of propagation, therefore, no sound. In the absence of a receiver in the woods, the falling tree only produces a series of pressure waves''

'' If a tree fell in the forest, it would disturb the surrounding air, creating vibrations that the auditory senses are capable of sensing. For the absence of these sound waves, there would have to be an absence of air, in which case the tree would not exist in the first place. It is not the absence of sound that should be considered, but rather the absence of awareness of the sound ''

[ludwig]

Yes, that's what I was going to say (I think). A sound is not vibrations in the air, it's how those vibrations are perceived by an observer, so if nothing was around to observe and translate the vibrations into a sound, then it wouldn't be made.

[ludwig]

..which of course also means that if there was someone standing nearby but he was completely deaf, then the tree still wouldn't have made a sound.

[chakka35]

You flatter this question by calling it philosophical. As has been pointed out in different ways, it depends on how you define sound.
If you mean the sensation produced in an animal's brain by the air-pressure waves falling on its sensors then of course there will be no sound if there is no such brain.
If you define it as those pressure waves themselves then, equally of course, there will be sound whether there is a brain or not.

Philosophy is made of sterner stuff.

[mibn2cweus]

There is a glaring contradiction in the statement: '' The production of sound requires 3 things: A source, a medium, and a receiver. The source, through vibrations called "compression" and "rarefraction", creates a series of pressure waves that vary in frequency and amplitude. These pressure waves propagate through various mediums including water, air and solids. The receiver collects and converts these pressure waves into electrical impulses. If you remove any of the 3 requirements for sound, there is no sound.''

Following the production of sound by its source, it exists, independent of a possible receiver within range of its perception. For sound to exist it only needs to be produced. Hearing, if such proves to become manifest, is another matter which must follow the pre-existence of a sound to be perceived.

The issue boils down to a more basic question. Is the quality of 'sound' dependent on whether it is perceived? As Jumbuck in the first and Chakka in the last post have indicated this issue can be easily resolved if one makes the distinction between the actions by and conditions in which sound is produced and the method or process by which the sound is perceived. Producing sound and hearing it are two different matters and while hearing presupposes that a sound is present sound does not depend on its perception but only upon its production for its existence. To be heard, sound must first exist, independent of its perception.

[mibn2cweus]

Just as effect follows cause and perception follows existence, consciousness is the perception of a preexisting reality. If what one claims to perceive is not a facet of reality than the process is not of consciousness but of delusion. Reality may be altered following a process of consciousness but the process of consciousness always presumes the preexistence of a reality to be perceived. Reality unperceived, unacknowledged, denied or misrepresented is no less real all the same.

As an example to put this all into perspective:

Ultrasound, which is a subcategory of sound differentiated only with regards to the frequencies involved, offers a stunning example of how sound is evidently present regardless of whether it is heard or not. It is not sound which magically disappears and reappears when the observer leaves and reenters the scene of the crime as any suitable recording device can confirm. Only whether or not the sound is heard varies in the absence or presents of one with the capacity to perceive and distinguish the presence or absence of the phenomenon in question.