Summa Bergania:About

From Summa Bergania

What is Summa Bergania?

I organized this website for personal reference. Using the MediaWiki software, it is easy to upload all the text-based things that I want to keep track of (essays, old emails, programming examples, recipes, etc.), so that I have searchable access to it from any computer in the world. And, of course, because it is public, anyone else who wants to search through the troves is free to do so and encouraged to share feedback on the corresponding discussion pages.

Regarding the name, in March 2005, I was asked to write out a summary of my beliefs for a worldview discussion group I participated in. The result was my creed. After writing the original draft, I sent it along to my friend Cory for discussion and jokingly called it the Summa Bergania—a pun on Aquinas's comprehensive theological enterprise.

The name stuck and as I distributed and corrected my creed, it went by that name. But of course, there is more to me than just my creed... and since this site more comprehensively describes me, it is more accurately my Summa.

Is this a blog?

Not really. I add content fairly regularly, but I don't often post reactions to current events. I'm more idealistic at heart, so rather than posting knee-jerk responses to the day-to-day actions of politicians, businessmen, and movie stars, I might craft an essay on how I think things ought to be. For example, I wouldn't report on a specific health-care related incident, but I do have an essay on a possible solution for modern health care.

Some people might find blog-like aspects here, like my essay On Kitzmiller, but in general that's not intended. Even the Kitzmiller essay was more of a critique of Judge Jones's ruling as a document (just as I might critique a book), rather than a report on the events.

Latin Grammar

One visitor commented that "Summa Bergania" is not grammatically accurate:

If you're going to treat Bergan as a Latin name it needs to be third declension and the title of your mini-opus should be "Summae Berganis", or "chief points of Bergan", although that doesn't mean too much. "Summa Opinionium Berganis" would be better.

I admit that I have no talent for Latin, but another friend assures me that his critique can be dismissed:

I think Summa Bergania means "The highest Bergan-like things," where "Summa" is a substantive adjective in the nominative neuter plural and "Berganius, -a, -um," is a simple adjective meaning "Bergan-like." If this is the case, I see no error in Summa Bergania.