Pardon the bastardization via my "armchair doctorate in philosophy", but your "tools and rules" model sounds like a classic "subjective/objective" model, where there are actors and there are things being acted upon.

While this is a useful model, it's just a model. And just like Newtonian Physics is a great model for predicting and altering most behavior at non-relativistic speeds and energies, the model breaks down when we start looking at the "extreme" situations, and so we have to upgrade to a larger more inclusive (albeit far clumsier) model: relativistic mechanics, quantum mechanics, and so on.

In particular, subjective/objective as a model keeps you from seeing that every observation you make as a subject also influences the object to a tiny degree. In Physics, this is parallel to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. So you can't completely define a ruleset and a toolset. You can only define a toolset and ruleset that mostly work for any given system.

Keep your mind open to larger models as well, although again, you may not necessarily use them for everyday things.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

In reply to •Re: The recurring model by merlyn
in thread The recurring model by bl0rf

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.