Knowledge comes by taking things apart: analysis. But wisdom comes by putting things together.

A clock taken apart reveals its gears and springs, yet not why anyone wants to know the time. That is the gap this saying points to. Knowledge grows by dividing a subject into pieces and measuring them, while wisdom is seeing how the pieces fit together and what they mean for a human life. It echoes the old contrast between analysis and synthesis, and between reductionist and holistic thinking. That contrast runs from Aristotle's idea that a whole is more than its parts to Gestalt psychology and modern systems thinking. Little is firmly documented about John A. Morrison, so the attribution is hard to verify.

Say you are weighing a job offer. You can list salary, commute and title in a spreadsheet, which is useful knowledge. Wisdom begins when you step back and ask how those items combine with your health, your relationships and the season of life you are in. The decision then concerns a whole life, not a set of columns.