The Logo and the Motto

The basic design of the logo of the Houston Circle was created by Javier Fadul of The Arm of the Armfar Collective. The point of the circles in the logo is, well, self evident. The motto of the Houston Circle, printed around the circumference of the logo, is Plura agitando nihil spernere didicimus ("By considering many things, we have learned to despise nothing"), which is a line taken from Leibniz's Specimen dynamicum pro admirandis naturae legibus circa corporum vires et mutuas actiones detegendis et ad suas causas revocandis (1695).¹ The Houston Circle strives to emulate Leibniz's efforts to preserve what was of value in both the views of his predecessors and his contemporaries by seeking to understand and learn from the great philosophical figures of the early modern period by using the tools of contemporary analytic philosophy.
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¹G. W. Leibniz: Mathematische Schriften, edited by C. I. Gerhardt , 7 vols. (Halle, 1849-63; reprint ed., Hildesheim:Georg Olms, 1962), vol. 6, p. 236. "For if you just omit the harsher things they say against others," Leibniz observed, "there is usually much that is good and true in the writings of the distinguished ancients and moderns, much that deserves to be brought to light and deposited in the public treasury" (ibid.; G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Essays, edited and translated by Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber (Indianapolis:  Hackett, 1989), p. 119).