If a Tree Falls

Perhaps you've heard the joke. "If a man speaks in a forest and there isn't a woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?" Of course, it's simply a play on the philosophical "If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?"

"Sound" is defined as "Vibrations transmitted through an elastic solid or a liquid or gas, with frequencies in the approximate range of 20 to 20,000 hertz, capable of being detected by human organs of hearing." Simple enough. So, given a gas such as air and a tree falling that produces the required vibration frequencies, it is inevitable that such an event would produce a sound. No doubt at all. So what is the point of the philosophical question? I read a short story some time ago called Vanishing Point where a scientific artist devised an instrument to tell if reality is an illusion we create or a real thing. This is precisely the idea of the question. Is sound real -- an actual thing -- or is it real only because we can detect it? The argument is that something that is not perceived does not exist.

The materialist is on board with this notion. He would argue that if it cannot be measured, it cannot exist. And ... poof! ... God ceases to exist. The existentialist is good with this. I remember a movie -- Bulletproof Monk -- where a "super Buddhist monk" is given wonderful powers of mind and body to protect some sacred scroll and is required to pass it on to a successor who meets specific qualifications. In training his successor, he tells him to climb the air to the second story of a building. "I can't do that," the American student assures him. "How can I do that?" "You just force the air to hold still for you," the wise mentor tells him. "If you believe it, it is true." That's it. That's the logic. That's the idea. Perception is everything. Perception doesn't merely receive reality; it defines reality.

Now, I'm thinking, "Yeah, try that out on that oncoming bus. Just believe it isn't there and see how that works for you." Not to be encumbered by reality, though, Science assures us that "Sound is vibration, transmitted to our senses through the mechanism of the ear, and recognized as sound only at our nerve centers. The falling of the tree or any other disturbance will produce vibration of the air. If there be no ears to hear, there will be no sound." I suppose, then, we can discount recording devices and audio measurement systems and such ... no, that's not working. And so it goes.

What's my point? My point is that there is a reality. Atheists will deny the existence of God because He cannot be apprehended, but they'll go on to borrow from Him for existence ("Why is there something rather than nothing?"), morality, values, and more. The existentialist will deny any reality outside of perception, but when reality outside of perception hits them in the head, it will hurt. Us? We're constantly asked, "How can you believe what you believe???!!" The fact is that if there is a genuine reality and that reality doesn't require my perception to be real, then all that is really essential is that we believe what is real. Sometimes that's called "observation", sometimes "faith". But just because it's not perceived does not demand that it's not true. Agreed-upon perceptions aren't the issue. What is real is the issue. Get that right, and it won't matter if everyone agrees. Someone has to be wrong, right?