But the Philosophers Stone was more than that. It not only allowed transmutation, but also was an elixir of life, curing illness and "perfecting the human soul". In essence, it was the one thing that would allow humans to do all good; the "universal means". It was a single thing from which all good outcomes could be effected. The search for the Stone can be seen as a search for a unifying principle.

There is a parallel between this search and what Stoneseeker does. Seeking the stone in the computational sense is looking for the simplifying, central aspect of a system. Once it is discovered and isolated, it can be used in a variety of ways as a means for many different ends.