There's a bunch of different things that tend to get conflated here, largely by photographers who because they tend to lean a bit technophile are charmed by the idea of algorithmic approaches to what are essentially emotional problems.
1. How to people perceive things, especially pictures of things?
2. What properties do pictures have?
3. What should I do when I take a picture?
The photographer in search of rules is interested, of course, in #3. People seeking to provide such rules to sell their book or promote their web site, gleefully gather up items from #1 and #2 and file the serial numbers off, presenting them as #3. Often, as in the case of Leading Lines and the Rule of Thirds, they haven't even got them from category 1, they're just made up entirely, but presented as if they were fundamental laws of perception.
Now, knowing how people perceive things, and understanding properties of existing good pictures, these are great ideas. You don't need to be able to apply words to any of it, though. You perceive things much the same way others do, so you can knock off #1 simply by paying attention. #2 requires that you actually look at pictures, and pay rather more attention. It doesn't hurt, here, to have some people point things out about pictures for you. Some stuff is there but it pretty hard to consciously notice unless you have someone pointing things out.
Turning all this material into a #3, well, you cannot algorithmize it. You can't just learn the properties of flour, water, salt, leavenings, sweeteners, and be a pastry chef. If you work away on existing pastries, make a bunch of pies and have people point out the properties of a good crust, and so on, you can learn to make a passable copy of existing pastries.
But there's no algorithm that's going to get you to a new pastry on your own. To get from copying to creating, you're just going to have to try some stuff out, throw a lot of stuff out, and exercise taste and judgement based on experience, and even then sometimes you just aren't the guy. You haven't got it.