Kind of the boring stuff engineers discuss about

I think we are entering a subject of philosophical contention. How do humans "perceive" sounds? What do we actually mean by "perceive"? Who else can perceive? Animals? Robots? Living tissues and cells?
However, as far as we define "perceive" as the signal received by the brain from the ear; ie the output from the ear entering the brain as input, preception can be said to be in frequency domain. Time varying frequency domain? Yes I guess so, though it sounds pretty much like an oxymoron.
We always like to think that the brain is a rather random and non-linear system. How then can the brain perform the fourier transform, which entails "numerical methods" of integration and "digital calculations"? Why? It doesn't have to! As put forth by Antonia, the human ear is capable of performing the fourier transform by mechanical means. Then the next question - how can physical objects inanimate as hair cells in delicate ears do such intricate mathematical calculations? Does it like mathematics so much? Does it even like anything? Can it?
Take a capacitor for example. The voltage across it is always proportional to the time integral of the current through it. We won't think a capacitor, dead as it is, is capable of doing mathematics. It doesn't even want to do anything. It can't want anything. Yet, it nicely yields an output that we can model mathematically.
So now we know, we intelligent humans are actually modelling the physical world with a humanistic tool called mathematics. The converse statement, having the whole world to obey rules dictated by humanistic mathematics, is barely thinkable. Or perceptible. Which leads back to our first question - what do we actually mean by "perceive"?
For more information, refer to the following link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-time_Fourier_transform

-Wilfred Lim , yet again, to stir some shit