Oh dear I can see this disintegrating into exactly the point the author was making, thoughts and opinion dominated by absolutism. The use of language in the article has led it down the very path which the author is questioning. He has fallen into the trap of writing an article on a complicated subject phrasing it in colloquial terms and not choosing his words with care. 

The very concept that there are any rules is a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself.  Through history scholars have attempted to explain why some things are more pleasing to the eye than others. That their explanations should be taken forward, by others, as rules is ludicrous. 

It is fact that the majority of the human race find some proportions more pleasing to the eye than others. Because of the explanation by classics scholars of why the Athenians chose to build the Parthenon to the proportions they did does not make it a rule that others must follow. 
Build your parthenon just the way you choose, but please don't come and ask later why the Athenian one looks so much more impressive, and why the steps look straight when viewed from the city below though they are curved when you are standing on them. There is an explanation, it is not a rule, you chose what you wish to do. 
The same as you choose to use horizontal or vertical lines in your images. It is a fact that on viewing angled lines there is more electrical activity stimulated in the human brain, that may not be what you want to inspire. 
You may choose to have no areas of high contrast or colour depth if that is what you want your images to be. Yet you cannot deny a person viewing the image will take far less time if these are not present because we are all by our nature predestined to notice areas of high contrast first and some colours before others, it is has been the essence of our survival as a race.

The choice of the word 'rules' in the article was not very helpful and devalued what I believe was the intention of the writer. It is worthy of consideration if this poor use of language has actually illustrated the predisposition of western culture to absolutism though.    
 

And every one said, 'If we only live,
We too will go to sea in a Sieve,---
To the hills of the Chankly Bore!'
Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve.

Edward Lear
http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ns/jumblies.html