Our Name & Logo
In the earliest formative days of a (Christian) study center at Hampden-Sydney, Board members Dr. Richard McClintock and Director Missy DeRegibus spent many hours exploring appropriate names and logos for the new and as-yet unnamed venture.
In homage to the classical, literary, and liberal arts heritage at Hampden-Sydney, and after vetting many possible candidates, they decided on Cogito, a Latin word meaning “to ponder” or “to think.” Taken from Descartes’ well-known philosophical statement, “Cogito ergo sum,” or “I think, therefore I am,” the phrase is also reminiscent of the proverbial adage, “As a man thinks, so is he.”
Our logo, symbolizing the seamless internal continuity of Christian thought, is the well-known Möbius strip, named for its discoverer, German mathematician August Möbius. A Möbius strip is a surface with many interesting properties, the most obvious being that it has only one side and only one edge. Unsurprisingly, the Möbius strip has been the inspiration for much fertile artistic and mathematical imagination. It is also our inspiration for following the path of the intellect toward consistent truth.