> This is simply because it is an intellectual field that is not subject to professional norms of cognitive workers. You will likely find, if you read period pieces or biographies of similar situtations e.g. 19th century EM engineers, that they too had an inflated sense of the scope of their understanding of matters.

Engineering education in the 19th century was a crucible; only the best and brightest successfully graduated. The following excerpts are from a blog entry[0] on the book The Great Bridge.

In three years’ time he had also to master nearly a hundred different courses, including, among others, Analytical Geometry of Three Dimensions, … Calculus of Variations, Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis, Determinative Mineralogy, Higher Geodesy, …, Orthographic and Spherical Projections, Acoustics, Optics, Thermotics, Geology of Mining, Paleontology, Rational Mechanics of Solids and Fluids, Spherical Astronomy, … Machine Design, Hydraulic Motors, Steam Engines, Stability of Structures, Engineering and Architectural Design and Construction, and Intellectual and Ethical Philosophy.

A century later, D.B. Steinman, a noted bridgebuilder and professor of civil engineering, would write, “Under such a curriculum the average college boy of today woul be left reeling and staggering. In that earlier, era, before colleges embarked upon mass production, engineering education was a real test and training, an intensive intellectual discipline and professional equipment for a most exacting life work. Only the ablest and the most ambitious could stand the pace and survive the ordeal.

… Of the sixty-five students who started out in [Roebling’s class], only twelve finished. And among those who did not finish there had been some rather severe breakdowns, it appears, and one suicide.

[0] https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2006/01/26/favorite-extrac...