Heisenberg takes a final step in his concluding chapter, on “the role of modern physics in the present development of human thinking.” His use of the word “development” (Entwicklung) signals a return to the fundamental dimension of reality that is “History”: that is, human mentality as historically unfolding. What Heisenberg now spotlights is the paradoxical recognition that the concepts of daily life or common sense are integrated into a much more comprehensive framework than modern scientific concepts. “One of the most important features of the development and the analysis of modern physics” is the “experience” that “the concepts of ordinary language, vaguely defined as they are, seem to be more stable, in the expansion of knowledge” than are “the precise terms of scientific language.” On reflection, “this is in fact not surprising.” For scientific language is to a much greater degree than ordinary language not only “derives from an idealization,” but, what is more, from an “idealization” that is based on “only limited groups of phenomena.” In sharp contrast, “the concepts of natural language [as Heisenberg now calls the language of common sense] are formed by the immediate connection with the world; the express reality,” in its genuine wholeness–even though, or precisely inasmuch as, the “undergo changes in the course of the centuries, just as reality itself undergoes changes.” As “natural language,” however, “they never lose the immediate connection with reality.” To be sure, the scientific concepts are “idealiziations” with “precise definitions” that make possible the connection with a “mathematical scheme;” but “through this process idealization,” the “immediate tie with reality is lost.” This is the price of scientific concepts must pay for their “very close” correspondence “to reality in that part of reality which had been the object of research.”

That’s all from “On Heisenberg’s Key Statements Concerning Ontology” by Thomas L. Pangle.

In other words, Heisenberg believed something very similar to Nancy Cartwright’s philosophy in How the Laws of Physics Lie. Not only is her work one of the best philosophy books I’ve ever read, Cartwright is obviously correct in her main assertions. STEM absolutists would probably wail uncontrollably if they knew Werner Heisenberg essentially thought the same thing.