On the origin of speech (with apologies to Mr. Darwin)

It has been a busy week for us here at Revoluminary, filled with efforts to continue building out the site, activity within the team, meetings with advisers and investors, and emails with our growing community of beta testers (thanks to you all, we're working as fast as we can!). In my spare few moments, I've even gotten in some interesting reading.

As we work on this project, it's been pretty incredible the enthusiasm that we see. Not merely about Revoluminary, but also about the opportunity to learn and share knowledge. It's great seeing how excited people are about everything from physics to French, literature to travel. And whatever the interest, it seems that once excited about something, we want every one else to understand and share our enthusiasm!

In the midst of all these discussions, I was reminded by a teammate here about simple joys of discovery. A former teacher, he has just returned from a cross-country trip, and shared a forgotten piece of linguistic history. It seems (as several of you were probably already aware) that the English word "travel" is derived from the French verb "travailen" which later came to be understood as "to take a journey". The original definition of that word, he tells me, was "to toil" or "to labor" reflecting a time when even a short trip took such money, effort and risk that it was considered an economic labor.

We went on to discuss a book I had recently finished on the history of mathematics. Yes, it's true. But honestly, it was incredibly interesting, and offered some great background on the subject. An interesting example: While I was aware that we used the Arabic numbering system (1,2,3) rather than the ever-so-practical roman numeral system, I can honestly say I'd never given mathematic formulas that much thought. Thankfully, a 9th century Baghdad mathematician named Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi did give it some thought. A lot of thought. In fact he wrote a book about it, referring to his mathematical principles as "al jebr" or "a reunion of broken parts". His concepts proved such a success, that in the West they became known as the book of al jebr. Or as we now know it: Algebra.

Beyond mere trivia, the collision of linguistics and history and math and language in so casual a discussion reminded us both that knowledge is not geographically limited. Nor is it constrained by the fields and labels which we ascribe. It is, more often than even I realize, a fascinating tapestry reflecting many cultures, ideas, and relationships.

It is in that spirit that we are working to build Revoluminary, with the conviction that each of us has some knowledge to share and some things we'd love to learn. And apparently a lot of you agree, as the response to our upcoming beta testing has been great! We've now sent invitations to join the beta site in a few weeks to people living around the world and teaching all manner of topics. Which reminds me, our community of beta testers has been joined by several Italian instructors..!