Principle named for G.K. Chesterton, illustrated by a tale of a man killed by a longhorn bull when he tore down a hedge he thought was blocking his daily commute. Newatia uses it as the counterpoint to the tethered-cat fallacy: before throwing out rules like 'hybrid apps are bad', investigate the original circumstances (Zuckerberg's 2012 quote, era-appropriate JS perf, Cordova/React Native shared-codebase mistakes) to decide whether they still apply.