At a time when people can disagree about the sizes of the crowds before their eyes, it should come as no surprise that they can disagree on scientific theories that are even harder to discern. But in today’s toxic political climate, when deliberate ambiguity and “alternative facts” stand in for knowledge, it’s never been more important for scientists and academics to be accurate in their presentation of what we know. I admire Rovelli’s goals, but they would be better served if he were more careful.

“Reality Is Not What It Seems” is “a travel book,” Rovelli writes, “describing one of the most spectacular journeys that humanity has taken: a journey out of our limited and parochial views of reality, toward an increasingly vast understanding of things. A magical journey out of our common-sense view of things, far from complete.” His many historical and philosophical digressions can be amusing, and anyone unfamiliar with the characters in the book will find much to enjoy here. Yet oversimplifications devalue these references too. It’s a leap to say “the connection between problems posed by the scientists of antiquity and solutions found by Einstein and quantum gravity is, as we shall see, surprisingly close.”

Wedging old ideas into new thinking is analogous to equating thousand-dollar couture adorned with beads and feathers and then marketed as “tribal fashion” to homespun clothing with true cultural and historical relevance. Ideas about relativity or gravity in ancient times weren’t the same as Einstein’s theory. Art (and science) are in the details. Either elementary matter is extended or it is not. The universe existed forever, or it had a beginning. Atoms of old aren’t the atoms of today. Egg and flour are not a soufflé. Without the appropriate care, it all just collapses.

Science provides a systematic method of building up from the measured and tested ideas and equations we agree on to realms that we don’t yet understand because measurements are not yet sufficiently precise or are too far outside our limited perspective. If presented correctly, the scientific view of reality clarifies many of the spurious controversies we often encounter by separating what we know from what we are still trying to understand.

The beauty of physics lies in its precise statements, and that is what is essential to convey. Many readers won’t have the background required to distinguish fact from speculation. Words can turn equations into poetry, but elegant language shouldn’t come at the expense of understanding. Rovelli isn’t the first author guilty of such romanticizing, and I don’t want to take him alone to task. But when deceptively fluid science writing permits misleading interpretations to seep in, I fear that the floodgates open to more dangerous misinformation.

A great chef once told me that many of his most talented colleagues had at one point been smokers and, as a result, tend to use a bit too much salt. This turns out in any case to be what many palates prefer. “Reality Is Not What It Seems” is a bit oversalted in an intellectual way. It isn’t junk food. It’s more akin to P.F. Chang’s. Everything on the menu looks enticing and perhaps even a bit exotic, and the service and ambience are pretty good. But the end product, though tasty, isn’t always as nourishing and sustaining as one might have hoped.