In a philosophical sense, String Theory does require us to give up on the “fundamental” understandings we had of the universe, but not as a form of replacement, rather an entry point to learning about the science of what is essentially a whole new world. I like to think of it like trying to cook a gourmet meal, but instead of a kitchen, you are using purely chemistry and laboratory equipment. String Theory (along with most of Modern Physics) goes to a more in-depth analysis of the inner workings and details of classical properties, almost as if you are trying to directly manipulate the exact flavors of your meal using its chemical, molecular, and mathematical makeup, to such a point where these “fundamentals” of our classical understanding are merely estimations of the finer details of reality; the rounding up of 0.9898914135723641… into just 1.000000000. The world may have always been like this; it was just our macro perceptions focusing on the estimation of these properties as a foundation for more than a century of studies of the physical world, and only now are we finally reaching the actual framework of the Universe.