I wish I had something more to say than that this is a beautiful essay.  As a mathematician, I know that communicating an understanding of what I do requires that I communicate subtleties far finer than non-technical language seems to allow (non-ambiguously).  Much of the (very very little) training that mathematicians receive in popular communication teaches us to simplify or elide these distinctions; but it is nice to hear a voice warning that <i>over</i>-simplification, that achieves apparent comprehension at the expense of later profound misunderstanding, can lie at the end of that slippery slope.