If a tree falls is there sound?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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“If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there to hear it. Does it make a sound?” is an old riddle. The point was that, at the time, the definition of sound involved someone hearing it, similar to definition ©. At the time, the answer was, “No, because if no one hears it, there is no sound.” Since this riddle was introduced, the definition of sound changed to definition (a) in Cecil’s dictionary. Since that time, today, the answer is “Yes. It doesn’t matter is someone hears it, waves still propogate through matter, therefore, there is a sound.”

In summary, it’s an old riddle, but the answer has changed over time.

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dumb question!

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I’m going to use an answer I read in a book a long, long time ago, that has stuck with me ever since and seems to answer the question rather well:
“Of course there is. There are birds around, aren’t there? And there are always squirrels, or raccoons, or any number of other animals that are quite capable of hearing.”…if you want to make it a truly Zen question, you may assume that there are no organisms anywhere nearby that possess ears to hear, but there are still those organisms that “hear” through vibrations in the air, like bats and many bugs. Imagine a forest completely empty of EVERYTHING but trees, and you’ve lost the realism of the question…

–Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup…

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Of course it makes a sound. It’s just that nobody is around to hear it. It certainly makes the vibrations and things like that that go into making a sound it’s just that if you don’t hear it…you don’t hear it. It’s like if a tree in China falls right now (and I live in the U.S.) will it make a sound. Of course it will but I won’t hear it.

–Michael
Or would you rather talk about monkeys?