Okay, three mind boggling questions that have been on my mind...

[vegan_chick]

Okay, get ready for it...

1. Is there such a thing as infinity? and if so how?

2. If a log falls off of a tree and no one is there to hear it, did it really make a sound?

3. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? (sorry, I couldn't help myself)

[Gryphon]

1. Well, infinite is used in math a lot. A line, for an example, is infinitly thin. In reality, however, I don't know if you xan find something that's infinate. Stuff even like the grains of sand on a beach are limited. We live in a limited world full of limited things. Some of that can be argued over.

2. I'm pretty sure the log would still make a noise.

3. The egg. Donosaurs were laying eggs long before the chicken ever existed. :P

[Chani]

Of cource, you can agrue (depending on your beliefs to the start of the universe) that we all came either from a creator (in which the original, or chicken was created and laid the egg) or we just had a big bang and started from single-celled organisms which evolved into the chicken who laid the egg. In all conclusions, the chicken laid the egg.

Though kudos have to be given to gryphon. I like the dinosaur thing.

Vegan... Hmm... well, just 'cause human ears didn't hear the branch fall doesn't mean that it wasn't heard. Trees and animals know... even the wind (who speaks) knows. Personally, whoever originally posed this question (how ever many years ago) ought to be flogged. I have heard a tree fall before. I am sure as the sunrises and sets that it always makes a sound when it falls. There are many many things in life that are true and we don't have to experience them all for that truth to exist. We learn from others' experience. Someone sees a branch fall off a tree and tells you about it. You don't have to experience that to know it is true. You just have to trust that the other person is telling you the truth... not always an easy thing.

My definition of infinite.... Far more than is understandable or measured. Well, someone had to give it a name. They, pondering the same question as you are and not able to comprehend beyond our known time and space, had to come up with something to describe the undescribable, right? I think that over time, people have added to the original with theories and guesses. If infinite is truly that, the unknown and unmeasured, then there is no answer to the why it is or how it is, or it couldn't be infinite. This is way too scientific for so early in the morning.

[Aurora]

Umm... the "If a log falls in a forest, and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a noise" isn't exactly a question to be taken literally...

I believe it is a koan, like "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

I think the log question is asking you whether human witness is necessary for something to happen... If humanity is that self-centred.

[GodMageMajere]

But doesn't the 'one hand clapping' have the official answer of *thrusts one hand forward*, which would, unless done in a vacuum, have the sound of air displacement?

[Peter Murray]

Or you could try this:
Hold your hand up, fingers stretched out.
Fold the fingers down fast to hit your palm.
Straighten them out again.
Repeat until you get bored.

One hand, clapping all by itself. Probably already tried that, but anyway.

Bah humbug, koans.

[Gryphon]

Ha.

CL. THE OTHER HAND MAKES THE AP.

I'll have to look up the exact scene. I think it's in Soul Music, Terry Pratchett.

[Aurora]

There's no proper answer to a koan... It's just meant to make you think. There are others ones, but that's the most well known one. It's open to interpretation.

[drea]

I remember reading somewhere once...oh yes.here is where you will find the chicken/egg answer.

and as for the one hand clapping thing...well. that's here.

I read too much.

[semiramis]

In response to number 2, I have another quote from PTerry (Small Gods, pg 2):

One of the recurring philosophical questions is:
"Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when there is no one to hear?"
Which says something about the nature of philosophers, because there is always someonein a forest. It may only be a badger, wondering what that cracking noise was, or a squirrel a bit puzzled by all the scenery going upwards, but someone.

[Rysade]

Drea: Ahhh, Joshu. Gotta love him. A better Zen Master may never have existed. His ability to spout nonsense which puts his readers off into a daze of self contradiction and doubt is unmatched. Probably the coolest Zen Masters ever. Lots better than the one who hit his students with a bamboo rod.

Y'know, it's a good thing I'm around to bail you guys out of stuff like this...

Ok, for question one we have:

"1. Is there such a thing as infinity? and if so how?"

The answer to this one I think is very obvious. Just imagine counting to the highest number there is. Imagine succeeding. Can you imagine that? I don't think you can. Infinity exists because there is no way that 1+1<>2. Seriously. Eventually, if you reached the highest number there was, theoretically you would not be able to add 1 to it. And what would that say about all of math, everywhere? There is no number to which you cannot add 1 to, therefore, infinity exists.

"2. If a log falls off of a tree and no one is there to hear it, did it really make a sound?"

I think that this is a rephrasing of the problem of skepticism. You may have heard the tree fall, Chani, but what if you weren't there? If you did not experience it, then what evidence is there that it made a sound? Moreover, what evidence is there that you have not hallucinated everything in your life since birth, thereby hallucinating the sound of the tree falling? Philosophers still debate over whether our senses can be trusted TO THIS DAY.

It's remarkably similar to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. How do you know that it made the sound? Perhaps it only makes a sound when someone is around to hear it? Anything you observe, you also influence.

"3. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? (sorry, I couldn't help myself) "

This last one I could really just pass off as a logical fallacy. The chicken and egg have existed simultaneously for however long they have been around. Indeed, define 'chicken.' Perhaps a chicken is not a chicken if it has brown feathers? 'First' implies a point at which a chicken came into being, a singular moment in time before which there was not 'chickens' and after which there were 'chickens.'

I think the best argument I could make on this one is put nicely by a favorite author of mine, Kevin Kelly:

"There is nothing to be found in a beehive that is not submerged in a bee. And yet you can search a bee forever with cyclotron and fluoroscope, and you will never find a hive."

The chicken and egg exist simultaneously. There are no eggs without chickens. There are no chickens without eggs. They cannot exist independently, so when you ask "which came first, the chicken or the egg," you really ought to ask yourself if your left half of your body came before your right half.

Mmmm. God I love this stuff. Please tell me if I'm horribly misguided...

I wouldn't want to waste the rest of my life being (gasp) WRONG.

[GodMageMajere]

Ah, The Straight Dope. Truly, is their any question old Cecil can't answer? Some great stuff indeed. That's the source (in book form, not Net form) that I got my one-hand-clapping answer from.

[Kathy Li]

Ok, mind-boggling (unless you're as old as me and have heard all the answers) question #4.

Q. If hotdogs come in packages of ten, why do hotdog buns come in packages of eight?

[meteorite]

...but if you buy the jumbo hot dogs, they come in packages of eight as well.

Problem solved.

[Kathy Li]

...except for those packages of twelve...