Yes |
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90.7% (529) |
No |
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9.3% (54) |
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It could happen <.< | |
no b/c there would be nothing to interpret the acoustic energy into sound. | |
If a tree falls in the woods, does anyone give a shit? | |
lol, like in that weird ass movie "The fountain" with hugh jackman? the tree floating through space? | |
I have always hated this question. If the tree falls, it is going to make noise, it is a simple fact. Whether or not anyone one is there to hear it has no bearing on physical reality. | |
Dude read the other posts, sound by definition is vibrations in the air being perceived by humans. Maybe you should have taken the red pill, or the blue one, either way wake up in ur bed and forget you met morpheous | |
Yes, just because no one hears it doesn't mean its not there. | |
When it hits the ground, the ground vibrates. Vibration causes sound. Whether someone perceives it or not is besides the point. | |
done it | |
If you can move your hand fast enough. If you can just clench very quickly (Hell, I can do this.) | |
If a bear shits in the woods, does it smell like shit? Yes... how is the tree any different? | |
it could fall off a cliff into an ocean, and it could have a point so that is silently slides into the water below, making no noise | |
That's a definition of sound. Not the definition of sound. Hence the ambiguity. | |
There is no physical reality if it is not known to humans. We define sound as a certain energy that we can perceive with our ears, according to Uexküll.
Sound only exists because we define it as such. | |
Well even that could make noise. You'd need a place with no friction. Such as outer space! :D | |
This is an odd reflection of the escapist community as a whole. The majority of us are very science minded and therefore use the scientific definition of sound, while a few are more philosophy oriented and go for a more perception based definition. On top of that the science based members seem to get sick of this argument very quickly, leaving the philosophers to try and convince the next batch of scientists. I hope everyone realizes that this question bears a less literal meaning than anyone seems to see. The point is to determine if you think literally or philosophically, the distinction has been made through this community. On top of that the debate that has ensued is a very apt representation of religion Vs. science. An interesting event indeed. | |
The laws of physics state that it must create soundwaves, even if they don't get heard. Soundwaves are vibrations in the air. The presence of a cochlea to recieve these sounds is not a factor. Also, there's probably plenty of wildlife around to hear this tree fall. | |
Yes it does rofl | |
Again, wildlife do not know what sound is. How can you know that what a dog hears, is the same as what a human hears. Actually, we already know that dogs hear different frequencies. Another example is... uhm... the smell of a flower. To a human, it's a soothing smell. To a bee, it's "opium". Not just a smell. Do they even have a nose that functions the same way as the human nose? They just catch the particles of a flower that we catch with our ears and recognize as a flower's smell. For bees, it's something completely different. | |
...and hits a mime, does anyone care? | |
meh thats what I think and there should be two words for the things. | |
So? A dog having someone shout at it reacts in pretty much the same way as a human. They can hear. Ergo, they recieve sound. It doesn't matter what they actually hear. | |
Yes it makes a sound. There's barely a question here. | |
Also, do you know what the five fingers said to the face? Looking at it from a simple point of view, it does make a sound, it's something all falling trees have in common. | |
...what a stupid question... vibrations arent reliant on the existance of humanity. | |
To get technical Its sounds that can be heard, that dosent mean they have to. edit: noises and/or vibrations that can be heard | |
Unless you are a human that understands dogs, or a dogs that can speak human languages, you can not prove your point. EDIT: As in, you cannot say that a dog receives sound. Sure, they react to it, but that doesn't mean they perceive the same. | |
I say no. A "sound" in it's literal meaning does not exist until it is converted to electrical/nerval impulses by your brain. Then, these electrical and nerval impulses are sound. Sound Energy is the act of vibration traveling through atoms. So therefore, A tree falls in the forest and makes a sound and nobody's around, it didn't make a sound. It made sound energy. I await the screams of "IDIOT." "U SUCKS" "OMG UR RETARDED" etc. etc. | |
Of course. Sound, as far as my uneducated ass knows, is made by vibrations in the air (or other substances). Whether there are any humans to feel the vibration with their ears that are specially designed to detect such things or not, doesn't matter. | |
If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound? This is a zen kōan that is supposed to be inaccessible to rational thought but is accessible to intuition. Whatever that means, but okay. I tend to go on intuition anyway, so it's no big deal. There have been many answer given to this question over the years. The one I reject out of hand is: "No it does not make a sound because as defined by the dictionary, a sound must be heard." I reject this answer because I doubt if Buddhist monks thousands of years ago were all that concerned with nitpicking dictionary definitions, particularly the definitions of English words. So this is a dead end. Another solution that is offered is that there is no answer but the kōan is meant to quiet the internal monologue in preparation for deep meditation. I don't know about you, but such questions do not quiet the internal monologue. They make it noisier as I puzzle out the question. This may be just me. I can't see those damned Magic Eye things, either. But, I've seen people stubbornly cling to "there is no answer." It smacks of them not arriving at this conclusion on their own but just repeating an answer they had been told. A variant on that is that there is no one answer but each person can find a different piece of wisdom hidden in it. This is more in line with what little I know about Eastern Philosophy. Arriving at your own answer is more important than what the answer is, and I do agree with that. Which means that you should probably stop reading here and go draw your own conclusions. But, from here, I know of two conclusions, one is often repeated, the other is mine. The first deals with perceptions and it does go through many variants. A common variant involves questioning the existence of things that are not observed. As in, "Do things really exist if we are not there to see or hear it?" This implies that reality is a show put on for our benefit. Sort of like that movie The Truman Show where everyone in Jim Carey's life was an actor. This is in line with some Eastern philosophy where reality is considered an illusion and such. This is seductive, but I cannot subscribe to this idea. If reality is a show, who is the show for? All of us collectively? Am I just an actor in your show? Are you just an actor in mine? Questioning reality may be useful in some cases, but reality seems pretty solid. So, I can't buy the idea of reality being an illusion. Particularly since it is all we have and zen does not seem to replace it with anything (although I admit I am largely ignorant of what zen teaches in this regard and I am also not completely closed to things beyond this perceived reality). I may be a bit too practical to be a philosopher, or to be a successful one. But here is my take on the kōan. As stated above, this is an answer, not the answer. But it is an answer I find satisfying. If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound? First off: to answer the question is to miss the point. In Eastern philosophy, never is a direct answer to a direct question the point. It's always working sideways towards some other meaning. Our first instinct when asked this question is, yes it does make a sound. We say this because we know that when objects hit the ground, a sound is made. The sound may be different depending on what falls and what it lands on, but when something strikes against something else, it makes a noise. But the question is, how do we know if that particular tree made a sound when it fell? The answer is, because we assume it does. The important thing to realize and understand is that much of our perception is based on assumption. Our perception is finite so much of what we perceive is assumed rather than directly observed. Some Eastern thought calls for the excising of assumption from our lives, but our mere ability to function relies too heavily on assumption to remove it completely. Instead we need to be aware of how much of what we perceive is assumption and realize that sometimes our assumptions can be wrong. That sometimes we are misinterpreting incomplete data. This is what I believe is the point of the kōan. In closing, I was driving during a wind storm. I saw a tree near the roadside fall. I did not hear it. | |
People forgot to take in account the animals, insects, etc... that hear and/or feel the vibration as it falls. But even without them; a tree still falls and it still hits the ground. | |
Nothing I can say hasn't already been said, but I'm going to go with, 'Sound vibrations, which have been proven to occur one-hundred-percent of the time due to the natural laws of the universe, will occur regardless of the presence or lack thereof of human beings.' | |
better question: if a tree falls down in the forest and no ones around does anyone give a shit. | |
What if there is simply a receiver near the tree. No actual person, and since apparently wildlife doesn't count (or so some people say in this thread, I can't say I agree with them), this should work. Electronics isn't a person, and the person isn't physically there at the time. So the tree falls, makes a sound, and a person on the other side of the Earth hears it. | |
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Yes, you can also slap with one hand as well.