Wendell Berry’s test for a good solution: it solves more than one problem and creates no new ones, because it fits the larger pattern it belongs to.
Extended definition
Wendell Berry set out the idea in his essay “Solving for Pattern”, collected in The Gift of Good Land (1981). His examples come from farming. A solution that answers one problem in isolation tends to create problems elsewhere in the larger pattern of the farm and its community. A good solution works with that pattern, so that one change answers several problems at once.
Berry goes on to list the qualities good solutions tend to share. Among them, a good solution accepts given limits and makes use, as far as it can, of what is already at hand.
Related terms
Sources
- Berry, W. (1981). Solving for Pattern. In The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural. San Francisco: North Point Press.
Provenance
Stub entry created 27 September 2026 in the Quartz Sanitation run, to give a page to links from the Wendell Berry page that pointed at no page. Written from Berry’s published essay. First-pass entry: sections require enrichment from the underlying project documents.