If a Tree falls in the middle of a Forest...

Looking out into the field, noticing a tree standing among many, thoughts drift towards the famous question: If a tree falls in the middle of a forest, does it make a sound? After much deliberation over the years, a solution to the problem has evolved. If one knows that the tree exists and that it falls, then one doesn’t need to necessarily be within ear shot distance of it to know that it made a sound. However, if one doesn’t know that the tree exists, then it didn’t make a sound.

If we stand next to the tree, and it falls, we all know that there is a definite sound. If we are told that someone is standing next to the tree, then we agree that they hear the sound of the falling tree even though we are not present to witness them hearing the sound. So we know that if someone is present, there will always be a sound. What if no one is present to hear the sound of the falling tree? It still makes the same sound, we just don’t hear it, but we know the properties of the tree interacting with the ground. If we don’t know that the tree exists, let alone that it has fallen, then a sound was not made. If someone was robbed, and you never found out, then in the world you live in, that person was never robbed. He has only been robbed once that knowledge has been shared with you. If we are talking about a tree, then we have already declared the existence of the tree, and hence it must make a sound. A more suitable statement proceeds that if a tree falls in the middle of a forest, and no one knows that it has fallen, then a sound was not made.

Looking back out onto the field at the nearby tree firmly rooted into the ground with its brown, crackly, thick bark leading up to extensions, branches which lead to more, each thinner than the previous. The thinnest branches bend and sway in the wind, moving the leaves back and forth. Is the wind causing the leaves to move, or is the tree moving its hands and thereby causing the wind? Fanning the air and carrying the tree’s scent, nature’s scent, in my direction, in all directions.