I understand that the question is, if no one is around to hear it, did it make a sound?
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It really depends on how you understand or define the word “sound”.
One way to claim that “sound” is a pressure variation in the air (could be other media) that has a frequency between say 10Hz and 20kHz. So if one can say that such a vibration existed, then “sound” existed. This is an example of an “objective reality” way of defining sound.
An alternate method is to say that “sound” is a perception of the listener. Sound does not objectively exist but is defined by the brain. This is not an unreasonable way to think of it either.
This is why it is a question in philosophy.
You could think of other examples. Say you like pasta and find all pasta delicious. Someone brings a dish of pasta to you, lets you see it and then throws it away. Was that particular pasta “delicious” since you never got to taste it? Is “deliciousness” a sense of your experience of food or a property of that food regardless of whether you ate it or not.
“Sound” is just pressure variations in the air that our ears sense and our brain translates into the sound as we hear and understand it.
So the question just means does any sound technically exist if nothing living hears it to translate into what we know as sound.
Basically, the question is more “How do we define sound?” Is something a sound just by virtue of emitting vibrations in the air, or is it only a sound once there’s an ear to hear it?
It also plays into a larger question of how do we define the things in the universe we can’t observe? Can we just rely upon our reasoning about what *should* happen there? What can we assume, if anything?
It depends on your definition of “sound”. Here’s how [one Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound) on sound defines it:
>In [physics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics), **sound** is a [vibration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibration) that propagates as an [acoustic wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_wave) through a [transmission medium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_medium) such as a gas, liquid or solid.
This is arguably the main article that Wikipedia has on sound. Its URL is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound. But note that it does specify that this is the definition *in physics*. If you look at the disambiguation page for “sound”, it has the following (emphasis mine):
>[**Sound**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound) is an audible mechanical wave propagating through matter, *or the perception of such waves by the brain.*
This really sums it all up. It’s either the underlying physical phenomenon that we can sense, or it’s the sensation of that phenomenon (or both). If you use the physics definition, then yes, the tree most definitely made a sound. If you (strictly) apply the perception definition, then you could say there was no sound.
Personally, I would say the physics definition is the stronger one. The perception definition doesn’t really describe sound – it describes *hearing*. If a tree falls in the woods with no one around, then the sound wasn’t *heard*. But there was a sound. Also, even if you concede that “sound” could refer to one’s perception of an acoustic wave, that doesn’t negate the physics definition.
It’s also worth considering that we don’t ask this about other things that we can perceive, like seeing or smelling. We don’t ask: if a tree falls in the woods, but there was no one there to see it, did the tree still reflect the sunlight that hit it? Or: did it still give off aromatic chemicals? We understand that there is the physical phenomenon, and our sensation of that phenomenon, and that the former happens with or without the latter.
To sum up, I would say the answer to the question is: yes, it made a sound, but no sound was heard.
The issue of what sound *is* is one part of this question. This is a pretty easy question for us to answer now, though that wasn’t necessarily true in the past.
But that’s probably the less interesting part of the question, at least for a philosopher, unless they’re really interested in how we use language (which, to be fair, lots are).
We can say “sound” is a pressure wave, but how do we *know* a tree creates this if we can’t hear it? Does it *really* make a sound?
This is a question of epistemology and of metaphysics.
In fact, the person credited with inspiring the question, Bishop Berkeley believed things *didn’t* exist unless they were perceived by someone. That’s a bit like a video game only rendering objects the player can see, except in this case it’s God doing it *(edit: God, not got)*.
It’s a question about the power of induction: the way we expect things to behave the same way we’ve seen them behave before (or heard them: we’ve heard a tree falling making noise when we’re there, so we expect a tree to make noise next time we’re around when it falls, and we expect one to make noise if it falls even if we’re not around).
It’s a question that rose again with the discovery of quantum physics, which raised the prospect that certain properties of things genuinely do depend on whether they’re observed (or rather, interact with other things in the right way).
Philosophers need validation and are afraid they’ll cease to exist if no one listens to their ramblings.
But really this is just a poor attempt at sounding profound when in reality they are simply questioning the definition of a word. Hence, everyone just uses it as a lame joke.
In addition to the already given elaborations on the potential meanings of sound as
– (a) a pressure wave in air,
– (b) the human perception,
there is another angle worth mentioning: **object permanence**.
Are things still there, do they even exist, whenever we are not observing them at all? Maybe they pop out of and back into existence whenever we look around? One could even argue if oneself is the _only_ entity that really exists, maybe everyone else ceases to whenever we are away from them?
Peek-a-boo is often interpreted as a test that babies fail this concept, including a belief that one becomes invisible or even intangible by shielding one’s face. Physics and really all sciences however work better if we assume an _objective reality_, one that is there regardless of what we or others do or think. So while we can never _truly_ verify it, it just works better in the end, and is simpler in the description of nature (“Occam’s razor”).
If a man shouts out an opinion deep in the woods where there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?
I’ll see myself out now…
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