Pharyngula

Posted by: Widgetas | January 19, 2009 9:56 AM

Yay physics.
But why does everyone glare at me when I give a similar answer?

Posted by: geoslob | January 19, 2009 9:59 AM

Oh, and 'More (metaphysical) pooping!'

Posted by: KI | January 19, 2009 10:10 AM

I'm perturbed by the anthropocentric outlook of that particular koan. A forest is, by definition, full of "someone"s (is that correct punctuation?), just not humans. You cannot have a forest without trees, right? Trees have bugs and birds, not to mention everybody else living there. They all exist and can feel vibrations (physical, not woo), so how can there be "no one"? Zen, my last hope for "spirituality', ground under the crush of relentless logic. At least I still have Stoicism.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead | January 19, 2009 10:21 AM

Facts, the ultimate bullshit discussion ender. Maybe that's why some people don't like scientists.

Posted by: Rudy | January 19, 2009 10:23 AM

“All metaphysics is meaningless” - Rudolf Carnap

Posted by: Roundearther | January 19, 2009 10:31 AM

People get upset with me when I tell them that, without a doubt, the egg came before the chicken. It's an evolutionary no-brainer, as far as I can see.

But apparently to say so is arrogant, because someone else has decided there is no answer. Or, of course, goddidit.

Posted by: Mystyk | January 19, 2009 10:32 AM

I saw this in the paper this morning and I just knew it was going to be posted here. It's just plain good.

Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | January 19, 2009 10:37 AM

"When a tree falls in the forest,
There is sound", the people chorused,
But a pressure wave is simply not identical with sound.
I'm not making the suggestion
That it's not a stupid question
But this answer is as dumb as any other that's around.
It's less "answer" than "illusion";
It's assuming its conclusion,
So it's true by definition, but the definition's wrong!
Is the stimulus sensation?
An erroneous conflation
Of the pressure and perception--leave them both where they belong!
This ignores the useful labor
Both of Fechner and of Weber
Who invented psychophysics to explore the problem right
Now their sig-detection theory
Might make researchers grow weary
But it works to study taste and touch, and sound and smell and sight!

Posted by: The Petey | January 19, 2009 10:39 AM

Roundearther,

I agree with you and say the same thing whenever someone asks that question.

I find I rarely have people disagree but I usually just say "because something that came before what we call a chicken had to lay the chicken's egg". When they throw the bible at me I usually just giggle and end the conversation.

Posted by: Eric | January 19, 2009 10:47 AM

@17
Or because eggs evolved long before the first birds.

Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | January 19, 2009 10:58 AM

If Wiley Miller draws a comic strip, but nobody is there to read it, is it still rather tedious?

Posted by: Quidam | January 19, 2009 11:08 AM

#22: Is a "chicken egg" an egg laid by a chicken or an egg containing a chicken?

Posted by: Rudy | January 19, 2009 11:21 AM

Mrs Tilton @16,

Perhaps you need to study a little Carnap to see why he thinks all metaphysics is meaningless to understand the relation to Danae's problem.

Posted by: Alverant | January 19, 2009 11:33 AM

The comment is online here http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/ and you can post responses if you sign up. Unfortunately someone said that sound waves and radio waves don't exist without a receiver. The bigger question here is, "Does something exist if there's no way for it to be detected?" Physics says physical objects and energy, the concept of detection is irrelevant.

Posted by: DM | January 19, 2009 11:39 AM

Quite a party there in D.C.

Price tag up to $170 million with the supporters ignoring the cost to the public (about $120 million of it). All the choice perks are going to the rich and powerful who arrive in their carbon spewing jets. Entire runways are shut down so they have a place to park their planes. Meanwhile the non-wealthy Americans who worked hard to make Obama's win happen are out in the cold and hustling for scraps at the table of the BIG donors who get heated tents.

Posted by: S.Scott | January 19, 2009 11:43 AM

Y'all are nuts. Where's the tree? I don't see a tree. It ust not be real.

Posted by: Andrew | January 19, 2009 11:54 AM

A more precise wording (and less prone to different interpretations and the arguing that follows) might be, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it still generate compression waves in the air?"
If worded that way perhaps only the quantum philosophers (Is it real if no one observes it?) would continue to fuss.

Posted by: itzac | January 19, 2009 12:25 PM

The question isn't intended to be answered. Rather, it serves as a demonstration that it is possible to formulate a question to which the answer can't be known.

Of course we can infer the answer from previous experience, but the question itself precludes the experience necessary to confirm it the inference.

I think the question provides a useful exercise, if nothing else.

Posted by: MPhil | January 19, 2009 12:37 PM

Oh dear,
I'm afraid non-sequitur misunderstood the problem that is posed by this question in two ways:

1.) The epistemological question - going back to Hume's problem of induction: Even given that we presently understand the world around us through science and our generalizations have been valid, how could we have reason to believe that the 'natural laws' we seem to find in nature hold true where we're not performing observation - and how could we have reason to believe that the future will be anything like the past? There can be no evidence for this, because that would simply mean a recursion to past observations. It's an unsolvable problem - and that's why the only reasonable stance is to assume it anyway because that assumption is necessary for pragmatic success of science and technology. And there's nothing wrong with that.

But this means that the epstemic question is fully valid and the answer is that we cannot know with absolute whether a tree that is going to fall will make a sound because we cannot know that the future will be like the past. So no, science does not enable us to know such things.

But then, everybody with even the slightest understanding of science knows that science, properly understood, is modest enough not to claim to have it right - observation is theory laden, and thus so is the data we gather. The theories we construct upon the data may work, and be corroborated, but can never be verified. That's why science doesn't claim to know - only to have a method of finding working explanations. And that claim is entirely justified.
But the epistemic question the 'falling tree' thought experminet actually asks cannot be answered by recursion to theories constructed by induction upon theory-laden observation.

and

2) There are two readings of 'making a sound' - the one that takes 'sound' to be any density-modulation travelling through physical media, for which the strip gives the right answer ('yes'), and the one that distinguished density-variations from density-variations observed by an organism through hearing - and means that by 'sound'.
In that case we will have to say that given a pragmatist stance toward the problem of induction and the fact that scientific inference to the best explanation is an accepted, regulated form of affirmation of the consequent (yes, the logical fallacy, look it up here: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/afthecon.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inference_to_the_Best_Explanation),
we still must make use of parsimony and can claim that to our best knowledge, we have to assume that were a sentient being capable of hearing present, it would make a sound, and that under this definition of sound it is meaningless to ask whether the tree produces it if noone is present, because this definition of sounds includes an observer and is thus not well-defined in absence of one.

... so the relation between metaphysics and science is not really as simple as the comic wants us to believe. Most people just don't get that metaphysics mustn't be a dirty word - because it refers simply to all the questions the arise which go beyond the object-level of the relevant empirical sciences - it does not mean that we have to invent metaphysical entities and spooky, woo-y 'forces' or whatever.

It simply means we have to recognize that in being scientific rationalists, we need good answers to such questions as:

-"What is the epistemic status of empirical science?"
-"How do we best conceptualize the domain of inquiry?"
-"What distinguishes science from pseudoscience?"
-"What are reasonable criteria for 'explanation' with respect to a phenomenon under investigation - that is: when are we justify to say we have a working explanation?"
-"What are the criteria according to which we should construct and sort through proposed explanations/hypotheses"?
-"How can we argue that established scientific theories are the most epsitemically tenable accounts of a given phenomenon?"
-"How can we argue against such positions as dualism, idealism or theism?"
-"Given that our theories are merely descriptions, intended as 'maps' of what we wish to explain, what do we have reason to believe 'exists', what is 'real' - strings, knots in spacetime, information-quantae, or perhaps better "that - whatever it is - which these descriptions attempt to describe".

...and so forth. These are all questions where there can be no empirical evidence to answer them, because these are not empirical questions. They are questions of epistemology, philosophy of science, -of religion, -of mind...

Thankfully, many brilliant people have contributed to finding answers to such questions in the most rigorous and rational way possible - and that's why we have good answers.
Without them, however, there would be no epistemic foundation for science nor good arguments for scientific rationalism.

Posted by: Confused | January 19, 2009 12:48 PM

It's this way at real parties, too

You either know the wrong scientists or the go to the wrong sort of parties. Scientists with access to stuff like dry ice pellets make parties cool.

I also heard tell of the case of a lab worker who soaked pineapple chunks in 100% Ethanol and took them to a party, but that might be an urban legend. (I'm too scared to try in case I get it contaminated with IMS or something...)

Posted by: ffrancis | January 19, 2009 12:59 PM

mayhempix:
"If a jet airliner is in the middle of the dessert and no one ever sees it or uses it, does it still have monetary value?"

Save that question for after dinner.

Posted by: mothra | January 19, 2009 1:04 PM

IF a troll squawks in the forest (#29), and everyone notices but none bother to answer- did the troll really squawk?

Posted by: mothra | January 19, 2009 1:07 PM

@42, I guess that makes theologians the designated drinkers.

Posted by: Sean McCorkle | January 19, 2009 1:57 PM

Ponder @ 34

MY American Heritage dictionary lists this for sound (right after your selection):

2.a. The sensation stimulated in the organs of hearing by such a disturbance.

in which case, a listener IS required.

I've always understood (perhaps misunderstood?) this koan to be an exercise to force the student to think about the nature of physical reality (pressure waves) vs the perception of reality. A bell's tone can be decomposed into fourier or bessel components, but is that really the same as perceiving the beauty of the sound.

Posted by: LisaJ | January 19, 2009 1:58 PM

@ mothra (#45). Yes, designated drinkers indeed. Or more precisely, that annoying, obnoxious 'friend', but not really your friend, who profusely vomits up crap in your car when you're forced to drive him home to keep him safe.

Posted by: VegeBrain | January 19, 2009 2:09 PM

FINALLY, SOMEONE FIGURED THIS OUT! I don't know how many times I've argued along the lines of this cartoon and so far nobody GETS IT. Yes, sound waves exist independent of anyone being around to listen. Thanks PZ for posting this and thanks for Non Sequitur for finally figuring out what should be obvious.

I feel better now; maybe there is some hope for the world.

Posted by: Sarcastro | January 19, 2009 2:17 PM

Everyone does know that the answer to all of your theories about the sound of a tree falling in the woods is a whack upside the head with a stick right?

"Well actually, there are energy waves that ..." WHACK!

"Sound, by definition ..." WHACK!

"Perception of..." WHACK!

Posted by: blf | January 19, 2009 2:33 PM

If a tree falls on that damn chicken, did the egg do it?

Posted by: Marc Abian | January 19, 2009 3:18 PM

@21

Oh snap!

Posted by: greg | January 19, 2009 3:49 PM

rude, but im not reading any of the comments above. sry!

on the subject of the comic - is sound the movement of waves through a substance, or is it the conversion of those waves by the inner ear/brain into perception?

If the former, then yes. It does not make a sound. If the latter, then no. 'sound' requires an observer.

or, another way - if every organism in all of existence could not perceive sound, would 'sound' exist?

Posted by: DiscoveredJoys | January 19, 2009 3:52 PM

If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it....

What forest, dude?

Posted by: Watchman | January 19, 2009 4:34 PM

My decibel meter tells me that sound does in fact exist, even when I'm not around to hear it. So does my seismograph. If I blow on a dog whistle and there's no dog around to hear it, has the whistle malfunctioned? And so on.

Posted by: Interrobang | January 19, 2009 5:08 PM

"If a jet airliner is in the middle of the desert and no one ever sees it or uses it, does it still have monetary value?"

Yes, because someone had to pay for the materials and labour used to create it, and for moving it into the middle of the desert.

Now, if a jet airliner is in the middle of the desert and no one ever sees it or uses it, it doesn't have any marginal utility, which is not the same thing.

If I blow on a dog whistle and there's no dog around to hear it, has the whistle malfunctioned?

That depends. You could be one of these people who can actually hear dog whistles (ow!), in which case, I'd be more than happy to inform you whether it was working or not, no dog required. :)

Posted by: Gary Walsh | January 19, 2009 5:30 PM

This seems like a case of missing the forest for the trees. The "koan" that is the subject of the cartoon is not meant to be a scientific question, but rather an ontological one. If you gave the obvious scientifically correct answer to your Zen master, he would probably hit you with a stick! The Koan is not about the nature of sound, but about the nature of "self". In Buddhism, there is no individual self or "soul" (doctrine of anatta). Each apparently individual self is a manifestation of a process of "causes and conditions" on which its existence depends (doctrine of dependent origination) and does not exist independently. Enlightenment is freedom from the delusion of self. Also, in Buddhism, there is the doctrine of "two truths", the relative and the absolute. The answer given in the cartoon is correct in the relative or ordinary realm which is the domain in which science operates, but Buddhism is concerned with understanding the absolute and freeing yourself from delusion.

Posted by: Facehammer | January 19, 2009 5:55 PM

#64

Indeed. I didn't read it properly. Ignore me.

Posted by: Monimonika | January 19, 2009 8:03 PM

VegeBrain @ #54:

By the way I have an answer for that other famous question.

Q: What is the sound of one hand clapping?

A: It's the same sound as the other hand clapping.

There's another answer at this link:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1357#comic

Posted by: Katkinkate | January 19, 2009 10:50 PM

Posted by: Gary Walsh @ 67 "... but Buddhism is concerned with understanding the absolute and freeing yourself from delusion."

The delusion of reality? Is reality a delusion, or do they just find it convenient to think so in order to justify their brand of woo?

Posted by: tophermurphy | January 20, 2009 12:18 AM

Does a tree even "make" a sound? If termites ate the core of the tree enabling it fall, wouldn't the termites be "making" the sound? If a heavy gust of wind hit the tree leading it to fall, wouldn't the wind be the one "making" the sound? If the tree fell and there was no ground would there be a sound? So is it the ground "making" the sound? Is not sound waves moving through molecules in the air? So would either the air or the wave be the one "making" the sound.

Doesn't "make" imply intention and intention implies consciousness. Is the tree conscious?

Posted by: mythusmage | January 20, 2009 5:58 AM

Buddhism, like the Hinduism it was derived from, treats our world as illusion, not delusion. Important difference there. Delusion is an errant belief. Illusion is a mistake in the interpretation of information. A monster in your closet is an illusion. Believing that monster in the closet eats you and poops you out, and that's why you feel like shit in the morning, is a delusion.

Posted by: Tulse | January 20, 2009 10:10 AM

This is why philosophy has the reputation it does.

Of course, that isn't an explanation of why Hume is wrong.

Posted by: Stephen Wells | January 20, 2009 4:44 PM

@78-79: You either face the problem of induction or the problem of noninduction. Noninduction gives you no grounds for any decision, expectation or action whatsoever, or even to expect your own continued existence.

Posted by: Azkyroth | January 20, 2009 5:11 PM

This seems like a case of missing the forest for the trees. The "koan" that is the subject of the cartoon is not meant to be a scientific question, but rather an ontological one. If you gave the obvious scientifically correct answer to your Zen master, he would probably hit you with a stick! The Koan is not about the nature of sound, but about the nature of "self". In Buddhism, there is no individual self or "soul" (doctrine of anatta). Each apparently individual self is a manifestation of a process of "causes and conditions" on which its existence depends (doctrine of dependent origination) and does not exist independently. Enlightenment is freedom from the delusion of self. Also, in Buddhism, there is the doctrine of "two truths", the relative and the absolute. The answer given in the cartoon is correct in the relative or ordinary realm which is the domain in which science operates, but Buddhism is concerned with understanding the absolute and freeing yourself from delusion.

I'll have to defer to Randall Munroe in responding to both that and Hume.

Posted by: Stephen | January 20, 2009 5:25 PM

The rooster came first.

Posted by: tus | May 31, 2009 5:13 PM

ah...reminds me of when i was a kid (like 10 or 11) when asked this question, through some thinking on the subject, i came to the ultimate conclusion that a treee DOES make a sound, since sound wave propogate regardless of whether someone is there to hear it.

i had also tackled the quandery of which came first the chicken or the egg, never minding the comical answer "the egg, because you order eggs durring breakfast and chicken durring dinner, since breakfast comes first...so too does the egg" i had deduced that the egg would come first, since the mutations involved in making a dinosaur into a chicken would occur to an embryo (or zygote...however far you take it back to consider this the point it is now that offspring) therefore the first creature to be able to be classified a chicken would have to have hatched from an egg (being only 10 mind you i had a more simplified idea of evolution so i had expected one to be born a chicken)
however i was also christian at the time and couldnt discount the idea that god created all life, and in that instance the chicken would come first, as god would have made it in its completed form not in the form of and egg and then sat around for it to gestate (he did have a tight schedule to keep...7 days...)

so ultimately i suppose i left the answer to that to which one was correct, creation only or evolution only (creation guided evolution would still involve the egg coming first) which ultimately through some large exhaustive searching of data and learning turned out to be evolution. so...the egg. (though then one can still question if this is even a matter of contention as the parents would likely be as chicken-like as the child, with only a small change between them, but never the less in all cases the child is more chicken-like than the parent, thus...the egg would come first)

i was a strange child...^_^