Simply put, the aim of the Book is to provide a clear, consistent and syntactically unambiguous public repository of scientific information.
The information in the Book is guaranteed to never contradict itself in terms or format or content. Some of the biggest complaints I have with standards in the math and science community are:
* In chemistry a metal is defined as anything that can spontaneously form a cation easier than an anion. In Astronomy, a metal is either Hydrogen or Helium, and anything else is not a metal.
* 3-dimensional polar coordinates by field:
* Mathematics -
* 'r' describes the distance from the origin
* 'θ' describes the angle a vector pointing to a point makes with the x axis in the xy plane
* 'ϕ' describes the angle said vector makes with the z axis
* Physics -
* 'ρ' describes the distance from the origin
* 'ϕ' describes the angle a vector pointing to a point makes with the x axis in the xy plane
* 'θ' describes the angle said vector makes with the z axis
* Electrical Engineers and those studying digital logic would denote the inverse of 'A' as 'A̅', whereas in formal logic the proper syntax is '¬A' (the syntax for virtually all other logical operations is also different between these fields)
There are more, somewhat more obscure examples across a multitude of other fields. It is my opinion that this forms too much of a 'language barrier' between fields of math and science, and that resolving these differences ought to be one of the highest priorities in the mathematical and scientific communities.
I've learned a great deal in my time as an undergraduate Physics Engineering and Computer Science student at the Colorado School of Mines, and one thing that really struck me is what many undergraduate students accept as a fact of life: textbooks are way too expensive. Due to the ridiculously high cost of materials at one point considered invaluable to the learning process, textbooks are rarely actually purchased by undergraduates. If a book is not required for homework, it will likely not be bought. If it is, then often it will be bought second-hand and/or shared between multiple students, or simply stolen in pdf format. An unfortunate side-effect of these practices is that publishing companies raise prices to prevent profit margins from falling, and to introduce things like online verification codes that make the textbooks not only a necessary purchase but also worthless for resale. These cyclic behaviours on behalf of both students and publishers may be spawned of either greed or need as the case may be, and it is not my intention to pass judgement onto any group. It is firm belief of mine that information ought to be free. To that end I decided to create a public repository of knowledge for people who don't want to spend $300 on a text they may never need to open, but still want to have a book in case they need it. So the Book was born, and into it I will put everything I learn from here on out, and hopefully I can influence some others who are experts in fields I know nothing about to chime in on those subjects.
Once I finish laying the foundation of syntax, I'll start building up the math and physics sections concurrently, and at the beginning of each section I'll place references to the sections that are required to be understood in order to make sense of what lies ahead, and at the end a compilation of other sections to learn to further understanding of the same or similar concepts. As mentioned in the above section of the README, I hope to attract people such as biologists and chemists to fill in the blank spaces of my knowledge. Their contributions will, of course be required to conform in syntax and format with any and all previous commits. If this really takes off, I'd be happy to see a series of books on each topic.
Please note that this isn't an attempt to recreate wikipedia. Contributions will be drawn exclusively from individuals qualified to speak at length about the subject they write, not thrown open to the masses. Furthermore, half of the goal of this project is to create a clearly structured environment for learning, not a information dump.