World around us-Sound without listener

                                                             

How does human mind experience/interpret the sound. What is sound? Typical definition of sound (in perspective of human ear) you can find out on google/any science site/journal/book is “it is a disturbance in air which produces pressure waves”. Waves travel in all direction and its energy dissipates as it propagates.

As shown in below picture, at some places molecule density is high and another place its low, this is how wave travels. One place of molecule’s energy gets transferred to another herd of molecules. In actuality, more molecules at particular place mean more pressure and low molecule density means low pressure.  

This is how it reaches to your ear as shown in below figure:

Sound wave travels through outer part of ear to inner part of ear. The main part of this process is cochlea which contains many hair cells and generates auditory nerves pulses and sends to brain.

Now the question is where the sound is? I am not talking the one which is generated by your vocal card or some other means and travels through medium and reaches to your brain. This is all we have discussed and found that it comes in form of energy contained by air molecule, however we are interested in practical/conceptual understanding of it because this is what we human being experience.

Now signals which are converted in auditory nerve pulses, they also are signals which contain energy. Then how does our brain interpret these signals in audible sound? How mere pattern of energy is experienced as sound?

These all are the energy patterns which are getting generated by a disturbance and come to our ear. Then from outer part of ear to inner part of ear, and then converts into auditory nerve pulses. In these processes where actually the sound is?

Before we find where actually the sound is let’s examining similar phenomenon in some other species. As we know that snakes do not have ears, then how they listen, so they must have some different mechanism to fulfil same task as we human being do i.e. help in survival through listening. Snakes feel vibrations which come to them through earth surface, and their skin is enough sensitive and developed to find out sound producing object location and direction. For them where the sound is? Similar phenomenon we can find in fish, fish are known to produce very different and vast variations in frequencies of sound signals, they do for their survival (attracting mate, to scare intruders etc.) too.

For some species signals are travelling through air, for some through material and for some through liquid. All are the energy signals called sound, however interpreted in different way in different species for their own sake of survival. The energy wave is experienced as sound in nervous system depends on million years of evolution of that particular species.

So, does sound’s experience exist only in mind and it is interpreted in different ways in different species? If there is no listener where the sound is? Can we ever know the real nature of sound?