Weekly Meditations

NOISE OR SOUND THERE IS SOMEONE AROUND This morning I was listening to someone revisiting the silly, age-old question, if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it does it make a noise? Seems that if the question were, does it make a sound, the answer would be easily derived at. There is actually a difference in the meanings of noise and sound. A noise is a sound that you hear but a sound is what makes a noise. Sound has physical and measurable presents. A noise which is the sound you hear does not happen unless the sound is made. But this is, as said, an age-old question which has been stumbled over for ever so long and is silly in a practical sort of way. One told me this “Quantum physics tells us that if there is no one there to “hear” it, then there is also no one there to “see” it or otherwise affirm the event. So, if there is no one there to see or hear it, does the tree really fall? Once you have assumed that the tree falls, then the matter of sound becomes trivial. The real question concerns whether a thing can happen at all if there is no one there to observe it.” With the absents of such empirical evidence, one of a strict scientific view would have to consider that to be true. (silly as it sounds) But I think the following limerick/poem by Theologian Robert Knox is a better answer.
“There was a young man who said: ‘God
Must find it exceedingly odd
If it seems that this tree
Simply ceases to be.
When no-one’s about in the Quad
‘ Young man, your astonishment’s odd:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by,
Yours Faithfully, God”.

Seems it does not matter if it is a sound or a noise, evidence or the lack of. As the Eyes of God are always there, and open to see, the Ears are always there, listening to hear.
David