I usually related the story like this: In the 1700s, Isaac Newton and Leibniz invented calculus (you know that really hard stuff we still have a difficult time learning today.) By the late 1800s, math guys knew how to do almost anything using just a pen and paper (calculate orbits, really advanced mostly graduate level math stuff). They felt brilliant. And they said, "shoot, 30 years from now, we're going to essentially be God. From any starting point, we'll be able to predict any outcome."
Then the undecidability stuff with Goedel happened, and then we had intutionism with Brouewer, etc, and they realized it wasn't to be.
This sounds a lot like that.