Member-only story
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
- Albert Einstein — simply the smartest man any of us may ever know of
As the riddle used to go, when a tree falls in a forest, if there’s no one around to hear it, does it still make a sound?
Near where I grew up, we had woods like that, with fallen trees near a pond, the area made golden in autumn, my favorite season. No wonder the output that emanated from the pens of some New England poets.
When we were kids, quite some time before any of us had studied Newtonian physics, we thought we knew the answer. It was a joke, right?
Turns out that answer may not be so simple or straightforward.
It may be dependent on whether a detector is present. Someone who can hear, or a sound-detecting instrument.
If a completely deaf person is in the vicinity when the tree falls, he or she may see it (depending on lighting), but cannot hear it. That person cannot be relied upon to provide reliable testimony as to whether there was an associated sound. No one would expect them to know. They might detect a vibration if the ground shakes as the tree falls. It has been said the other senses of one who is deprived of one are heightened.
