Dogen zenji
translated by
Yasuda Joshu Dainen roshi and Anzan Hoshin sensei

ON IN oto (sound)

ASCII Art Representation:

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Character Etymology:

Once written as a pictograph of a face with a mouth to create the old character for speak. Later, a tongue was added to show greater vocalization, i.e. to shout or to sing. This led to just the present meaning of sound.

A listing of all on-yomi and kun-yomi readings:

on-yomi: ON IN
kun-yomi: oto ne

Nanori Readings:

Nanori: o to

English Definitions:

1. ON: sound, noise, pronunciation.
2. IN: sound or tone.
3. oto: sound, noise, roar, or fame.
4. ne: sound, tone, note, voice, or chirping.

Unicode Encoded Version:

音

Unicode Encoded Compound Examples:

音楽 (ongaku): music.
発音 (hatsuon): pronunciation.
音訓 (onkun): referring to the pronunciation of Japanese's Chinese characters. See: on-yomi and kun-yomi.

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Sound is probably much simpler than most people think it is. It is caused by something moving back and forth.

Acoustic sounds

When you pluck a string, it vibrates. The vibration causes the pressure of the air to change, which in turn makes your ear drum vibrate at the same frequency (the same speed) as the string. The same thing happens when you hit a drum: it moves back and forth, which moves your ear drum back and forth. Human ears can pick up any sound between about 20Hz and 20kHz, meaning they can pick up any physical vibration that repeats between roughly twenty and twenty thousand times a second.

Resonance

Plucking a string gets it to vibrate, but it isn't the only way. The frequency it vibrates at is known as its natural frequency. You could instead play the same note with a different musical instrument, right next to the string, which would also cause it to vibrate. Everything has a natural frequency which causes it to vibrate when something close to it is already vibrating at the same frequency. This isn't necessarily a good thing, and it's the reason why opera singers can break glass and why wind can make bridges collapse. It is also the reason why certain frequencies are boosted more than others by the hollow body of an acoustic guitar.

Electric sounds

Artificial sounds and recordings are usually played using electric loudspeakers (a notable exception being the acoustic phonograph). A speaker contains a permanent magnet, an electromagnet and a cone-shaped surface. When an electric signal is fed through the speaker, the strength of the electromagnet increases and decreases, making it move away from the permanent magnet, then back towards it. This causes the cone attached to the electromagnet to move back and forth. As it can produce complex, non-repeating movement, it can replicate pretty much any sound, making it very versatile.

Digitally stored sounds

Computers and consumer electronics (such as CD players) take electric sounds one stage further. The position the speaker cone should be in at any given time is stored as a number, which the device keeps track of (in the case of CDs, it is a sixteen bit number, meaning sixteen 1s and 0s make up a number between 0 and 65535, which is how many subtle distances the magnets can be from each other). By reading the series of numbers in the right order, and moving the speaker to the appropriate position each time, the device can reproduce a very close approximation of the original sound (with CD players, the speaker position is updated 44100 times every second). This process is known as pulse code modulation, or PCM for short. While records and tape recordings can already reproduce sounds quite accurately, PCM enables recordings to be easily stored and shared. This is good news for people who collect recordings of sounds, such as music or audiobooks. It's also bad news for people who own the copyright on such recordings, if their licenses don't permit such sharing. This problem affects all media that can be digitised, however, not just sound. The various attempts at preventing the unauthorised copying of such materials are known as digital rights management.

The technical side of sounds

Sound is a type of waveform. This means that you can draw a sound as a graph, with the x-axis (the horizontal one) representing time and the y-axis (the vertical one) representing the position of whatever's making the sound. It also means that any sound can be translated into many sine waves of different frequencies and amplitudes. See Fourier analysis and Fourier synthesis for more details about how to break sounds down into their component sine waves, or how to build up sounds from these building blocks. Pipe organs have long been making musical timbres this way.

So there you have it. Sound can be as simple as something moving back and forth very quickly, or as complex as Fourier transforms. Just be careful not to accidently break your window.

A sound argument is a valid argument that has true premises (and thus, by extension, a true conclusion).

Let's unpack this definition a bit.

In logic, an argument is constructed of a number of premises followed by a conclusion. It's possible to make just about any combination of sentences into an argument; logic doesn't try to stop you. So, for instance, if you were feeling particularly trippy, you might compose the following argument:

Argument A:
P1. My brain is made of Naugahyde.
P2. All cats are shaped like trumpets.
C. Therefore, the moon will crash to earth tomorrow.

It's clear that this isn't an especially useful argument: you cannot deduce the conclusion from the premises, and neither the premises nor the conclusion are true anyway. It's an argument, all right, but it's neither valid nor sound.

A valid argument is one in which the truth of the premises necessarily leads to the truth of the conclusion. Note that this is not the same as saying the premises are actually true. For example, the following is a perfectly valid argument:

Argument B:
P1. All cats are shaped like trumpets.
P2. All trumpet-shaped objects are named "Queen Elizabeth II."
C. Therefore, all cats are named "Queen Elizabeth II."

Argument B is valid. Neither its premises nor its conclusion are true; it has this in common with Argument A. However, if the premises of Argument B were true, the conclusion would be true as well. This is why Argument B is valid when Argument A is not. As you can see, it's possible to judge the validity of an argument without knowing anything about the real world. The rules of logic tell you that Argument B is valid and that argument A is not, even if you have no idea what a trumpet is.

So finally we get to the topic of this node: soundness. An argument is sound if it is valid and its premises are true.

Argument C:
P1. All lions are mammals.
P2. The MGM mascot is a lion.
C. Therefore, the MGM mascot is a mammal.

We have reached our goal. Premise 1 is true, premise 2 is true, and the argument is valid. Thus our conclusion is true, and the argument is sound. Unlike validity, soundness needs to be checked against the world "out there". If it were to be established by biologists that lions are in fact reptiles, then we would have to change our judgement about the soundness of Argument C.

Note that an argument is only sound if the conclusion is logically derived from the premises. If the premises or the conclusion just "happen" to be true, that is not good enough to make an argument sound (or valid, for that matter). Here is an example to illustrate what I mean.

Argument D:
P1. Men do not have wombs.
P2. Men cannot produce milk.
C. Therefore, women can become pregnant.

At first, Argument D may seem convincing. After all, its premises and its conclusion are clearly true, and all three statements seem vaguely related to one another. However, C does not logically follow from P1 and P2. The premises do not talk about women at all. We cannot deduce anything specifically about women if all we're given are some statements about men.

The artificial examples of valid and sound arguments that turn up in textbooks are designed to be very clear. However, the arguments that are found in political speeches, talk radio, and newspaper editorials are usually much more complicated than this, and their logic (good or bad) can be obscured by elegant language and unnecessary padding. Many real-world arguments have the misleading persuasiveness of Argument D, and it is up to the listener to detect the fallacies that lie within them.

Furthermore, an argument can be strong without being deductively valid. For instance, the following argument isn't held together by the strict rules of deductive logic:

Argument E:
P1. I love him.
P2. He loves me.
P3. We would like to spend the rest of our lives together.
C. Therefore, we should get married.

It's not a deductive argument, but that does not mean it is useless or bad. If all the premises are true, then that lends good support to the conclusion. Strong inductive and abductive arguments can be good even if they are not sound.

By a similar token, not all sound arguments are necessarily good arguments. "All lions are mammals, therefore all lions are mammals" is both valid and sound, but it is circular reasoning, and thus it really has nothing of value to say.

All this is by way of saying that you shouldn't get too hung up on soundness. Some good arguments (like E) are not logically sound, while some bad ones are. Still, testing for validity and soundness will be a start toward figuring out whether an argument is a good one.

Sound (?), n. [AS. sund a swimming, akin to E. swim. See Swim.]

The air bladder of a fish; as, cod sounds are an esteemed article of food.

© Webster 1913.

Sound, n. Zool.

A cuttlefish.

Ainsworth.

© Webster 1913.

Sound, a. [Compar. Sounder (?); superl. Soundest.] [OE. sound, AS. sund; akin to D. gezond, G. gesund, OHG. gisunt, Dan. & Sw. sund, and perhaps to L. sanus. Cf. Sane.]

1.

Whole; unbroken; unharmed; free from flaw, defect, or decay; perfect of the kind; as, sound timber; sound fruit; a sound tooth; a sound ship.

2.

Healthy; not diseased; not being in a morbid state; -- said of body or mind; as, a sound body; a sound constitution; a sound understanding.

3.

Firm; strong; safe.

The brasswork here, how rich it is in beams,
And how, besides, it makes the whole house sound.
Chapman.

4.

Free from error; correct; right; honest; true; faithful; orthodox; -- said of persons; as, a sound lawyer; a sound thinker.

Do not I know you a favorer
Of this new seat? Ye are nor sound.
Shak.

5.

Founded in truth or right; supported by justice; not to be overthrown on refuted; not fallacious; as, sound argument or reasoning; a sound objection; sound doctrine; sound principles.

Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me.
2 Tim. i. 13.

6.

heavy; laid on with force; as, a sound beating.

7.

Undisturbed; deep; profound; as, sound sleep.

8.

Founded in law; legal; valid; not defective; as, a sound title to land.

⇒ Sound is sometimes used in the formation of self-explaining compounds; as, sound-headed, sound-hearted, sound-timbered, etc.

Sound currency Com., a currency whose actual value is the same as its nominal value; a currency which does not deteriorate or depreciate or fluctuate in comparision with the standard of values.

© Webster 1913.

Sound, adv.

Soundly.

So sound he slept that naught might him awake.
Spenser.

© Webster 1913.

Sound, n. [AS. sund a narrow sea or strait; akin to Icel., Sw., Dan. & G. sund, probably so named because it could be swum across. See Swim.] Geog.

A narrow passage of water, or a strait between the mainland and an island; also, a strait connecting two seas, or connecting a sea or lake with the ocean; as, the Sound between the Baltic and the german Ocean; Long Island Sound.

The Sound of Denmark, where ships pay toll.
Camden.

Sound dues, tolls formerly imposed by Denmark on vessels passing through the Baltic Sound.

© Webster 1913.

Sound, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Sounded; p. pr. & vb. n. Sounding.] [F. sonder; cf. AS. sundgyrd a sounding rod, sundline a sounding line (see Sound a narrow passage of water).]

1.

To measure the depth of; to fathom; especially, to ascertain the depth of by means of a line and plummet.

2.

Fig.: To ascertain, or try to ascertain, the thoughts, motives, and purposes of (a person); to examine; to try; to test; to probe.

I was in jest,
And by that offer meant to sound your breast.
Dryden.

I've sounded my Numidians man by man.
Addison.

3. Med.

To explore, as the bladder or urethra, with a sound; to examine with a sound; also, to examine by auscultation or percussion; as, to sound a patient.

© Webster 1913.

Sound (?), v. i.

To ascertain the depth of water with a sounding line or other device.

I sound as a shipman soundeth in the sea with his plummet to know the depth of sea.
Palsgrave.

© Webster 1913.

Sound, n. [F. sonde. See Sound to fathom.] Med.

Any elongated instrument or probe, usually metallic, by which cavities of the body are sounded or explored, especially the bladder for stone, or the urethra for a stricture.

© Webster 1913.

Sound, n. [OE. soun, OF. son, sun, F. son, fr. L. sonus akin to Skr. svana sound, svan to sound, and perh. to E. swan. Cf. Assonant, Consonant, Person, Sonata, Sonnet, Sonorous, Swan.]

1.

The peceived object occasioned by the impulse or vibration of a material substance affecting the ear; a sensation or perception of the mind received through the ear, and produced by the impulse or vibration of the air or other medium with which the ear is in contact; the effect of an impression made on the organs of hearing by an impulse or vibration of the air caused by a collision of bodies, or by other means; noise; report; as, the sound of a drum; the sound of the human voice; a horrid sound; a charming sound; a sharp, high, or shrill sound.

The warlike sound
Of trumpets loud and clarions.
Milton.

2.

The occasion of sound; the impulse or vibration which would occasion sound to a percipient if present with unimpaired; hence, the theory of vibrations in elastic media such cause sound; as, a treatise on sound.

⇒ In this sense, sounds are spoken of as audible and inaudible.

3.

Noise without signification; empty noise; noise and nothing else.

Sense and not sound . . . must be the principle.
Locke.

Sound boarding, boards for holding pugging, placed in partitions of under floors in order to deaden sounds. -- Sound bow, in a series of transverse sections of a bell, that segment against which the clapper strikes, being the part which is most efficacious in producing the sound. See Illust. of Bell. -- Sound post. Mus. See Sounding post, under Sounding.

© Webster 1913.

Sound, v. i. [OE. sounen, sownen, OF. soner, suner, F. sonner, from L. sonare. See Sound a noise.]

1.

To make a noise; to utter a voice; to make an impulse of the air that shall strike the organs of hearing with a perceptible effect.

Dryden.

How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues!
Shak.

2.

To be conveyed in sound; to be spread or published; to convey intelligence by sound.

From you sounded out the word of the Lord.
1 Thess. i. 8.

3.

To make or convey a certain impression, or to have a certain import, when heard; hence, to seem; to appear; as, this reproof sounds harsh; the story sounds like an invention.

Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear
Things that do sound so fair?
Shak.

To sound in ∨ into, to tend to; to partake of the nature of; to be consonant with. [Obs., except in the phrase To sound in damages, below.]

Soun[d]ing in moral virtue was his speech.
Chaucer.

-- To sound in damages Law, to have the essential quality of damages. This is said of an action brought, not for the recovery of a specific thing, as replevin, etc., but for damages only, as trespass, and the like.

© Webster 1913.

Sound, v. t.

1.

To causse to make a noise; to play on; as, to sound a trumpet or a horn.

A bagpipe well could he play and soun[d].
Chaucer.

2.

To cause to exit as a sound; as, to sound a note with the voice, or on an instrument.

3.

To order, direct, indicate, or proclain by a sound, or sounds; to give a signal for by a certain sound; as, to sound a retreat; to sound a parley.

The clock sounded the hour of noon.
G. H. Lewes.

4.

To celebrate or honor by sounds; to cause to be reported; to publish or proclaim; as, to sound the praises of fame of a great man or a great exploit.

5.

To examine the condition of (anything) by causing the same to emit sounds and noting their character; as, to sound a piece of timber; to sound a vase; to sound the lungs of a patient.

6.

To signify; to import; to denote.

Milton.

Soun[d]ing alway the increase of his winning.
Chaucer.

© Webster 1913.