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Modern science values experimental evidence to verify hypotheses. A College for the Deaf might put together a group of volunteers to visit a forest eith woods loney, dark and deep in order to keep promises that scientists made many miles ago. The deaf students could build a bleacher seat in front of a specially selected area of the deep forests with a few dead yet still standing trees. Then a volunteer logger with a chain saw could cut a very large tree and it could 'silently' fall to the ground make a mighty 'whump' as it crashed and made contact. The students could report the direct experience of a 'tree falling in the woods and there's no one to hear it'.

Unobserved physical events haven't a transformation in to human sense data such that sounds and sights are experienced by self-aware minds. Some animals have minds to react and ears to hear with; they can hear trees falling in forests and the sounds of little feet of wolves trotting along looking for a meal. I got a good photo of a picture of a raccoon up a tree the other day and it had good hearing. Lets consider the case of a tree in a forest without any sort of life form present to hear it.

Stellar novas collapsing vacated planets without life and ice bergs of methane splashing in to some Europan bog slip strike sheered off an ice sheet to plunge a few feet just haven't any impact as sounds. Self-awareness transforms those sound waves in to the mental experience of sound, just as the optic nerves process photons in to sight experience-neither of those sense experience derived phenomenalities exist outside a mind. Different forms of life experience sound and sight in differing waves with input of waveform abilities that are not equal qualitatively or quantitatively.

A tree falling in the woods can be quite an interesting experience-it can be a shame if anyone misses out on it. One winter there was a 90 m.p.h. wind that blew the top half of a dead tree off and it fell with the mighty clunk proverbially speaking. Some trees also 'fall' slowly it should be recalled. In muskeg forests the roots may be very shallow and a pine or fir tree that is 30 year old or as much as a hundred or more may slowly fall over like the leaning tower of Pisa at a speed of its oen-even over weeks so that it gently comes to rest on the horizontal a couple of feet off the ground. It is silent and you aren't missing anything if you don't hear it.

Let's go to the best case of a tree falling in the forest and no one is there, except a

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