Klarinet Archive - Posting 000247.txt from 2001/02

From: "Dee D. Hays" <deehays@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Organs and combination tones
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 06:35:51 -0500

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Hausmann" <bhausmann1@-----.com>
Subject: Re: [kl] Organs and combination tones

> At 07:57 PM 2/7/2001 -0500, Dee Hays wrote:
> >I feel like a little philosophy tonight. When that tree falls in the
> >forest, it generates a wave front in the air. That wave can be measured
by
> >a pressure sensitive device. That wave exists whether anyone is there or
> >not. However, that is not sound. Sound occurs in the brain when our
> >special pressure sensitive device called the ear translates that pressure
> >energy into something the brain can process and assign meaning to.
>
> Isn't this just a trifle egotistical? Or humanocentric? Suppose there is
> a squirrel in the forest. Would it not be a sound when HE hears it? How
> about a grasshopper? Or an ant? For that matter, a mushroom? And even
> BEFORE we have assigned a meaning to some random sound (bump in the night,
> etc.) it sure as heck was a sound, just an unidentified one.

Well I'll concede everything but the mushroom as all the others have an ear
of some type and brain of some type. I.e. they have a mechanism to turn the
air pressure wave into a sound. The mushroom could feel the pressure but as
far as we know today, they don't have anything equivalent to an ear and
brain.

Dee Hays

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