I've recently learned about the boot process for Linux. I can't help but wonder why we go through the trouble of acccessing the MBR after BIOS so that instructions there can, in turn, load the kernel into RAM.
Why the middle man - why doesn't BIOS load the kernel directly?
Because otherwise any time you used a different disk or file system you would need to rewrite the instructions in the BIOS. The MBR is an intermediary that handles that on behalf of the BIOS, knowing where to go to for the operating system.