Since the times of Plato and Aristotle we have lost our innocence in thousands of ways. One of them means theory’s double transformation from the act of observing the world and the heavens through the intellect to the act of measuring the world through our senses, on one hand, and, on the other, its transformation from the best way of living (superior to any kind of pragmatic endeavor) to a vague and abstract waste of time, inferior to any kind of praxis. This article studies the shifts in the meaning of “theory”, the shifts in the public perception of this term (with some particular references to the case of contemporary Romania) and, finally, it offers some considerations on the relationship between humanities and the theoretical paradigm.