If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?

I just got this off of Yahoo! frontpage and the answers from viewers are pretty solid.....for instance....

Well sound is: "the sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing by vibrations transmitted through the air or other medium."
So technically, if the energy vibrations that would cause sound never reach the 'organs of hearing', then no- it does not make a sound.
It's kind of like the 'Schroeders Cat' experiment...you never know unless you observe it, but to observe it would change the outcome...




Depends how "clever" you want to be about it.
If you ignore for a moment all the animals that may live in said forest, and ignore the fact that trees themselves are living entities then the question is not does the tree falling make a sound but does the tree exist in the first place.
This kind of thinking though is why Einstein thought quantum physics was bunkum.

Well since "sound" was around before the evolution of our ears then yes, yes it does....However "sound" in this case could be something totally different to our sensory experience of it...so yeah its complex but id go for yes...due to the evolution of our ears to process the dangers that come with loud noises...if you wanna go all post modern then you could say that "sound" cant be observed from an extrasensory angle therefore cannot exist independent of the listener and so on...but yeah...it makes a sound..





I think "complexity" is exactly what they were going for when they created the question. It's a paradox in a way. Technically it still makes a sound but can a sound really exist if it isn't heard?. It is a rhetorical question in every sense of the word.





Depends on what you think sound is.
If sound is the air vibration, then the answer is yes.
If sound is only sound if it affects someone´s nervous system, then the answer is no.