There's a big difference between the fundamentals, and the low-level practical applications. I think the latter is what estimator is referring to. You can't really make a breakthrough or do real research without a firm grasp of the fundamentals. But you definitely can make a breakthrough in, say, physics, without knowing the exact tensile strength of wood vs. steel. And yet, that type of "Applied Physics" was a pre-requisite at my school for the more advanced fields of physics that I was actually interested in.