Oh absolutely, there's always the anecdotes of Coltrane carrying around Slonimsky's thesaurus, or George Russel claiming Miles used his lydian chromatic concept

Oh absolutely, there's always the anecdotes of Coltrane carrying around Slonimsky's thesaurus, or George Russel claiming Miles used his lydian chromatic concept. But personally I find none of it really makes much sense until I sit down with the theory and practice it on my instrument. Memorizing theory with flash cards, like the OP mentioned, I don't find to be all that helpful.