If a tree falls in a empty uninhabited forest ,would it make a sound?

Question:Sound is a perceptual interpretation of vibration. We call this interpretation hearing.

If there is no one there to hear it, there is no sound. There is just a vibration that would have been interpreted as sound had there been any one there to do that.

Love and blessings Don

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Sound is a perceptual interpretation of vibration. We call this interpretation hearing.

If there is no one there to hear it, there is no sound. There is just a vibration that would have been interpreted as sound had there been any one there to do that.

Love and blessings Don

duh
well it would hit the floor

if a man says something and there is no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?

yeah, just no one would hear it. if no one sees me eat does that mean i wont gain weight? i mean, seriously.

lol @ dave w answer!

its one of these questions which may never be answered!

Yes. There is no such thing as silence anyway - not on Earth. Even if you go in an anechoic chamber you can still hear the sound of your body and nervous system.

No. It will make sound waves. If there is no one there or no animal to hear the sound waves then it did not make a sound.

I believe it would.

Only if you were there could the truth of it be known. But then again if there were nothing to carry sound then something could possibly fall unnoticed.

umm...like yeah lol....it will go plahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...with some eco iin the background

The same sound as one hand clapping

If you're there or someone is there to hear it, then it made a sound. But if no one was there and nobody heard it, then no sound was produced to the fact that no one can testify there was, right??

yes,the sound will be heard by the infinite universe even if nothing is around,it will still exist.

Yes, just like me crying alone in my room

yes it would, but there would be no one there to confirm this.

Yes it would but there would be no-one around to hear it! lol

The tree falling would generate vibrations - sound to us humans and animals. If there are no humans or animals to hear it, the vibrations would still be generated. If a tape recorder recorded those sound waves at the time the tree fell and someone played the tape 5 years later, they would hear the noise made by the falling tree - therefore even though there was no one around to hear it, the falling tree did make a sound.

Only if there was a receptor in the ear arena to morph the vibration into a sound...if not it would just be a vibration to all the little critters in the woods.

The bigger the tree the bigger the sound

Hell,yes,it would make a hell of a sound and don't let anyone tell you differently.

The question is primarily about our experience of the reality our world: Is this world real, or is it merely a figment of our imagination, which exists long as am here to observe? If we believe that the world is all what is in our imagination that we create a world full of sights and sounds with our mind then I can ask do I exist myself at all? Or am I just imagining myself into being? And this is complicated. We can also go on to ask if we create God?

If we follow the line of the argument of your question then why stay restrained only to the empirical facts of sound, or to the example of falling tree I a forest. As there can be many things happening without us witnessing them they we can doubt in a similar fashion. I can doubt, for instance, if the world really keep on existing behind my back; that everything might be disappearing in one direction soon as I turn our head to the other. I can stand in the middle of a busy market place and imagine that only those things that nothing else but what I can see in front of my exists.

This is one thing that cannot be proved or disproved to be either true or untrue, because there is nothing else to compare it with. So the fact that there is nothing aside what I see or hear or feel with my senses leads me to believe that all that exists is true the way it appears to be, that the information provided by my empirical experiences is reliable. The common sense says that the show of a falling of a tree, or that of growing of many others will go on regardless the fact that I am directly involved to observe or not. Yes, the tree that falls in the forest does produce vibrations regardless that I could understand as sound if I am close by.

I'd say that it does. The question is whether we count sound waves as sound objectively, or only when they are interpreted as such by an ear (since that's the way we always pick them out). It's just a definitional question; it's about how we use the word 'sound'.

Suppose someone does hear the sound, but they're a long way away from the tree, just as they hear another sound, like himself dropping a torch. He says "Those two noises sounded like they happened at the same time, but the tree-fall sounded very faint, maybe that sound was created earlier.". This sounds right - that the sound was created when the tree fell, not only once it's reached an ear; it would be weird to say it existed as a sound from when the tree fell only because it was going to be heard by someone later.

10 points please ;-D

ETA: This is assuming of course you accept that there is a physical world regardless of whether it is perceived, but blatantly you should accept that. For example, a lot of events can only be explained by data found many years later, often by people who weren't looking for that explanation. This makes little sense if we think nothing is going on whilst no one is looking.

Wood/would anyone care? :)

No.

When a tree falls it makes sound waves.

as there is no ears (or brain) to interpret it, it therefore did not make what we would class a sound.

However there *would* be sound WAVES.

HopeThisHelps

Stop and take the question apart. What is sound? If "sound" is just vibrations the tree makes, then yes it makes a sound. If "sound" is the phenomenon of a person perceiving the vibrations then no, it did not. The answer is yes and no. No serious philosophers spend time on this question. It is more of a basic question of semantics or hard science.

Sounds are vibrations which we interpret.
Even if no one is there the falling tree would make vibrations.
Vibrations = sound
So, yes I think it would make a sound, it just no one is there to interpret the vibrations.

If there is air around the tree, the falling tree will cause vibrations in the air, which is sound. So yes, it will make a sound.

The point you may be trying to make is that if no one witnesses this sound, how do we know the sound occurred (or for that matter, that the tree fell at all)?