I view music theory in much the same way as I do mathematics. In mathematics, anybody can be given a set of formulae and calculate values sufficiently but not many will be able to derive those formulae. It's the same in music; everybody knows how to use a scale but not many know how it is constructed.

At the end of the day, the application of the end results of music theory should be enough for the vast majority of musicians to get by on.

__________________