If a tree crashes down in a forest, and there is nobody around for miles. Does it make a noise?

Question

Not new. But fascinating eh?

Answer 1

Noise by definition is when sound waves hit an eardrum, creating sound. So your answer is no.

Answer 2

This age old question has often been misinterpreted as silly, but it has many philosophical implications. From a standard scientific point of view, it most certainly does make a noise, assuming that a tree in a forest grew there under the normal laws of biology and physics. So if there is a tree falling through air under the force of gravity and the momentum of the fall is stopped by the ground, why question only the sound component of the scenario? One could ask if an electrical fire starts inside the walls of your house and your not there to see it, will it still burn the house down? The point here is the laws of physics do not require human observation to proceed. Of course, there is likely to be other observers such as birds, animals and insects that could hear the sound. Wouldn't God hear the sound? One could still ask if you weren't there to hear the tree crash, how do you know with certainty that it made a noise? That is a question of proof that is satisfied with the high degree of probability that it did. To question that probability challenges the known laws of physics more than the noise itself and can only be considered a pointless contention.
However, the words "sound" and "noise" are generally defined as a perception rather than a disturbance in the air. If one defines noise as the perception of a sound, then a noise is a relationship between a source and a receiver. You can imagine a noise you didn't hear but it doesn't really have any tangible reality for you. It's not so much unreal as much as it is irrelevant to you. If you didn't hear it, the tree made no noise for you. Reality, of course, is not contingent upon individual perceptions, but that doesn't alter the fact that all individual perceptions of reality are restricted to their conscious thoughts, experiences, and ideas. But I will pose this question, if a tree crashes in a forest, and only one deaf man is within hearing distance, does it make a noise for him?

Answer 3

This question may have been asked many times on Yahoo Answers but that does not stop so many people missing the point.

When the tree falls it will produce compression waves in the air, but they are still just compression waves. If there is nothing around with the ability to convert and interpret those waves into 'sound' then no sound is heard. The waves need to be detected by a sense organ and then interpreted as sound. All links in the chain need to be in place.

Naturally, humans are not the only organisms with the ability to hear. If the questioner is assuming that the forest only contains trees and no animals, then the big question is 'do trees hear sound?'

Not much real evidence that they do, although many believe they do. Charles Darwin played his bassoon near a Mimosa (sensitive plant), Prince Charles talks to his plants and believes that they respond, and Cleve Blackster and Marcel Vogel thought that plants had senses and responded to human thought. Take your pick!

Answer 4

Here is the Schroedingers Cat question. It would still make a noise but there would be nobody around to hear it. The best way to answer that is to put a mike in the forest and record a tree falling when nobody is present. You would have an answer that way for certain.

Answer 5

Do trees fall down without making a noise ,even if there is nobody for miles around ? Bit like saying do waves crashing on the shore make a noise when no one is on the beach. It is a rather illogical question.

Answer 6

Hmm.... Technically yes but how do you know it makes a sound if no one is around to hear it?

Its the same with earthquakles 20 years ago there were only 200-300 monitoring stations in the world. Today there are more than 15,000 so does this mean that earthquakes are more frequent?

No.


If you look for something you will find it.

Answer 7

Sound is a compression wave in air, and such a wave is generated by an impact regardless of whether anyone is around to detect it. You might as well ask, "if a tree falls in the forest and there is no-one around to see it, did it really fall?". (Besides, the forest is full of little mice and birdies who would hear it, even if there were no humans around).

Answer 8

It does not make a sound. I've tested this hypothesis. I cut a tree but not to the point of falling. I placed a timer to initiate a final blow to the tree with another tree. I placed microphones and recording media. And true enough, the next morning the tree was fallen but no sounds on the recorder. That is so weird.

Answer 9

noise is caused by the vibrations of atoms. If a tree fell, it would indeed cause vibrations that could be picked up as sound. There was no one around, so how can this be known? The same way you know the tree fell.

Answer 10

The answer depends on your definition of noise. Are the sound waves created by the tree falling "noise" or do they become noise when you brain interprets them to be so.

Answer 11

Hey lol, everything makes noise no matter what. You don't have to be there to know there's noise, you've just gotta believe it or in other words have faith. For example: If some one is in Africa and some one in America is listening to music full blast, even if the African can't hear it at all, don't you think that common sense says there's still noise.