Why is the language of nature mathematical?

structures, even though there is a progressive more correct approximation with each subsequent model. Were we to decide that a more complicated figure should be invoked to model it, we would have to come up with a different shape. Of course, for many of our purposes of description and explanation, treating the Earth like a sphere works quite well (say, if we want to calculate the diameter of our planet). Be that as it may, I want to conclude this short essay by pointing out that Galileo’s realism about mathematics is a reasonable position to hold. The Earth is a sphere, or exemplifies that abstract shape, independently of us human beings, independently of our concepts and of our language. Of course, we need concepts and language in order to attribute the Earth its shape, but the latter is a mathematical property of the Earth that is quite independent of any subjective epistemic instruments. We can therefore conclude that the Earth can be said to truly possess a geometrical structure. Why this is so is certainly a very difficult fact to explain, one that should make reference to the details of its formation from the Sun (rotational effects, and so on). In any case, this is a question that, in its turn, cannot be answered without bringing in more complicated mathematical structures, exactly as predicted by Galileo in 1623.