Melancholy of Anatomy

In Wendell Berry's essay, Melancholy of Anatomy, Berry compares the human body to the knowledge that is held in the world. The human body and knowledge may not seem comparable, but the similarities between them is that they are both an assembly of parts put together to make something vast. Millions of tiny atoms are brought together and can make up the high functioning human body. The small ideas from everyone throughout time develop to create knowledge. However, Berry also talks about how the worth of the world is determined by the market. What he means by this is that products that are "beneficial" are truly beneficial to only the market who receives income or the government who receives power. The negatives to this greedy and selfish culture that our world is inhabiting is that it doesn't allow us to look at the world as a whole, only as a piece. We need to put all of these pieces back together to create a functioning society as a whole.

In Berry's essay, Melancholy of Anatomy, he writes, “We have accumulated a massive collection of ‘information’ to which we may have ‘access.’ But this information does not become knowledge by being accessible” (14). What he means by this statement is that just because information has become more accessible due to the internet and the network doesn't automatically convert it to be more knowledgeable. The more accessible the information that we have is the more likely we are going to learn invariably and quickly forget the information we just "learned". Therefore, just because we have endless amounts of information doesn't correlate to an endless amount of knowledge. Berry explains that sometimes to understand the future we have to forget the past, take what we have learned and look forward. Berry also develops the idea of a relationship between the market, research and knowledge. We use researchers and scientists to develop ideas and products. These products that claim to be beneficial are really beneficial for whom? They are only benefiting the companies that market them and sell it off as a great product due to the knowledge we trust behind the researcher who created this product. Not only is this with everyday products, but with military industrial products as well. The military industrial complex is founded on the "logic of revenge" this is what war is. The government have scientists produce products to help cause war. Science research doesn't wants us, the citizens, to comprehend all of the knowledge that they and the government hold. They have narrowed our thinking process to keep us occupied from asking questions that involve them. What Berry is advocating for in his conclusion is for us to be thinking more as a whole and taking all of the individual pieces and not just look at those, but to seek what they collectively represent.