Who said Does a tree still make a sound when it falls in a forest and no-one hears?

Answer 1

The short answer is, no one said this question as it is worded above. Below is the history of the similar question.

The philosophical and perceptual psychological background about this question:

Philosopher George Berkeley wrote A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge in 1710. He wrote, in part, "But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park [...] and nobody by to perceive them. [...] The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees therefore are in the garden [...] no longer than while there is somebody by to perceive them."

"The objects of sense..." refers to objects or events that we perceive with the 5 senses--hearing, sight, smell, taste, touch. However, as a philosophy question, it raises the issue of perception in philosophy: Does something still exist if we cannot perceive it with one of our senses. And, just what do we perceive...

For twenty-years after Berkeley's writing, philosophers took up " consideration of the emergence of meaning" (quote from Wikipedia). In 1754, William Fossett paraphrased Berkeley's writing in Fossett's writing, Natural States. However, it should be noted neither of these philosophers actually stated the quote in question ("If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound").

Over 100 years later, in June 1883, a question was posed in The Chautauquan magazine, "If a tree were to fall on an island where there were no human beings would there be any sound." [Italics and bold added].

This idea in 1700s-1800s was seminal work about the idea of perception. It has lead to a host of similarly phrased questions posed to students, first in Universities to philosophy and psychology students, and then to high school students. The point is to generate thinking about problems of perception.

Some similarly stated questions include:

1. If a tree falls in the forest... [some people add other details here such as distance away] but no one HEARS it...does it make a sound.
2. If a leaf falls in the forest but no one is present to SEE it, does the leaf still fall, gathering with other leaves on the forest floor.
3. If you SMELL the strong fragrance of aftershave, but you see no one nearby, do you assume a man just passed by before you arrived there?
4. If you experience the distinctive TASTE of onions in a casserole but did not see anyone make or bake the food, can you be certain the cook added fresh onions to it.
5. If you put your hand into a hole in a closed box and you TOUCH something that feels cold and wet, can you assume it came from a block of ice.
6. (You can probably think of more of your own 'If'-perception questions.)

Each question of these questions seek to make us aware of how perception affects how we interpret and assign meaning to ordinary events and experiences--or, to experimental experiences scientists or researchers create for us. It asks us to consider events and meanings of events, even if we personally do not witness or experience them, e.g.

• The tree no one heard still thudded; the leaf still detached from the tree without requiring our sight; aftershave is typically associated with men, even if we missed seeing the man pass by; the food might have contained onion salt versus chopped onions; and lastly, everything that is 'cold and wet' is not ice.
• Likewise, Blacks and women endured years of oppression... Events halfway around the world, like wars, take place even if we don't see the fighting.... Nazis killed millions of Jews in the Holocaust... Babies and children still die of starvation in some countries... etc.

A year after The Chautauquan magazine posited the question, magazine Scientific American took up the ongoing [until then strictly philosophical] debate in 1884, providing a science explanation for sound, ""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." (Scientific American).