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Original post by Eyra Anyhow, I guess the idea is supposed to be that a character would have perhaps practiced the motions of a technique described in a book, or at least understand the gist of how to perform it, but have not gained any of the functional muscle that might come from using it in combat.

How 'bout this: reading techniques in a book does not by itself confer increased skill, but it adds a margin within which skill is gained from actual practice more quickly. Sort of like experience from resting in WoW: Resting doesn't itself give you any experience, but you gain experience much more quickly while you're rested, up to a certain target experience value.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, the theoretical part of mining is called geology.
A highly skilled miner knows how to get lots and lotsa rocks out of a given spot, safely, quickly and efficiently. A well-learned gelogist can tell the miner what to expect if he starts digging at a certain spot, or where to look for mineral X (an experienced miner will take a pretty good guess himself). A competent metallurgist/stonemason/chemist/whatever can tell both of them what to look for in the first place, and an economist would tell them how much to charge for the stuff, if they were so stupid and ask him instead of the market.
The closest description of "theoretical part of fighting" I can think of is "sports medicine", with a strong focus on anatomy and forensics. (This might not be the appropriate place for the following joke: "What's the difference between a mole and a doctor who's bad at anatomy? None, both dig in the dark and produce mounds of earth."). A swordsman also might acquire some vocabulary in metallurgy, to understand whether piercing weapons are better against plate and cutting against mail (or was it the other way round?), to tell the smith how he wants his sword made ("The last one had way to much of its cross-section hardened, and became so brittle as a result that it effing shattered, and it wouldn't keep its edge anyway. Really, much more tempering this time, please!") and to judge the sword he's holding in his hands.

I think the main fallacy is not to assume a dichotomy between theory and practice. The fallacy is to assume that each theoretical field corresponds to exactly one application, and vice versa. Once geology helped you get the ore, you need some chemistry to process it, for example.

Nitpick to a previous poster: ITYM "piece of ore" instead of "scrap of metal", unless you were referring to a scrap heap or native metals (some metals can only be found as ores). Then again, how economic can it be to dig through someone else's overburden for pebbles of ore, if you can dig in your own claim and get in the habit of separating them neatly in two heaps?