I’ve always wonder why when a tree falls & no one is around to hear it, it makes no sound?
Like if it fell, it obviously makes vibrations which is what sound is.
Who came up with their odd saying?
1 Like
I have heard it as a question “If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound?”.
2 Likes
I believe it’s a philosophical thought experiment… do things exist if no one perceives them?
4 Likes
I don’t know who asked the question first, but I know how it works:
- Sound waves travel through your ear canal to your eardrum and cause it to vibrate.
- The vibrations travel from your eardrum to your ossicles (tiny bones in your middle ear).
- Your ossicles send the vibrations to your cochlea (a spiral cavity in your inner ear that’s lined with hair cells).
- The tiny hair cells vibrate and send messages to your auditory nerve (the nerve that connects your ears to your [brain].
- Your brain receives this information and translates it into sound. In other words, your brain is where your sense of hearing comes to life.
Basically the sound is all in your head. ( says the one with bilateral constant tinnitus.)
Sorry to go off topic.
5 Likes
When I worked for a vector control district, we had our own variation:
If a bird falls in the forest and no one is there to find it, did it have West Nile virus?
This was a reference to the fact that distribution maps of West Nile detections correlate strongly with distribution maps of human populations to do the detecting.
9 Likes
Google is your friend
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_tree_falls_in_a_forest_and_no_one_is_around_to_hear_it,_does_it_make_a_sound%3F
I’m pretty sure Sound & Hearing can be independent of each other.
Sounds can be made even if no one hears them. I never understood the philosophical part about the question, the answer is really simple I think (But maybe that’s just me).
2 Likes
@professor_porcupine, that’s the point… a person’s answer to the question betrays their philosophical perspective. For the record, I agree with you, however… there are plenty of people who take the view that we live in a human-centric universe and humans have to experience something for it to be valid. I’ll leave it for others to defend that side!
4 Likes
Ah I see, that’s why this question even became a thing in the first place.
I didn’t realize there was another argument to be made for this question.
1 Like
I used to explain to my classes that the old philosophical question “What came first, the chicken or the egg” was really about creationism vs. evolution. The creationist believes the chicken came first when God (or another intelligent deity) created it. The evolutionist believes the egg came first when two pre-chicken ancestors mixed their genes to birth the first chicken. Same kind of thought experiment.
4 Likes
ah I see, it’s a thought experiment that completely flew past my brain 
I thought it was both? Evolution is a way to create things no?
I moved these posts which were not comics out of the comics topic.
1 Like
Well, there you’ve started the philosophical discussion. 
1 Like
Yes, but in Young Earth Creationism, they hold that each kind of bird was formed, then told to be fruitful and multiply. In that world view, the chicken unequivocally came first.
Whereas in evolution, reptiles were laying shelled eggs, then at some point the leathery-shelled reptile egg became a hard-shelled bird egg, and then the birds differentiated into chickens and so forth after that.
4 Likes
Does Kind = Species? Or does Kind mean something else?
Also what is Young Earth Creationism?
Young Earth Creationism is the belief that the Biblical timeline is literally true: that the earth and everything in it was created in six literal, 24-hour days, and that the earth is only approximately 6,000 years old (based on calculating human lifetimes in the genealogies starting from Adam). “Kind” in this world view is best conceptualized as “taxon,” because it is difficult to define where the boundaries are. For instance, many Young Earth Creationists acknowledge microevolution, that is, differentiation of species within a “kind,” but not macroevolution, that is, the evolution of one “kind” from another.
4 Likes
Ah… isn’t this just Creationism???
Or the Young Earth part is reffering to 6,000 years old Earth specifically?
I see… how does Horizontal Gene Flow factor in? Or virus that edit genes?
Also don’t microevlution eventually lead to macroevolution?
How big does microevoluton have to be before it’s eventually macroevolution?
God can also create things thru evolution, right?
Is the whole debate simply in which way God Created life? Via Evolution or another way?
As a creationist, I’d still have to say the egg. Most of us do believe in microevolution, aka horizontal evolution, and the bird originally created that eventually gave rise to chickens was almost certainly different enough to not be called a “chicken” and be considered a different species if we could see it today
1 Like
I had a zoology professor at Montclair State back in the 80’s who was a Young Earth Creationist, although it wasn’t called that then. We had many prolonged ‘arguments’ about it (always friendly, though, because he was a cool guy). He’d be interested to know that the debate continues.
(I got an “A” in his class in spite of my opposing views… things sure were different then.)
4 Likes