In encyclopedias, the Encyclopedia of Human Thermodynamics, EoHT, a is a comprehensive, community wiki-style encyclopedia (see: home page) or compendium containing 1,000+ articles of information on all branches of knowledge related to the thermodynamic study of human life. [1] The articles on subjects in the encyclopedia are arranged in groups, as shown in the adjacent navigation box, such as by sub-branches, by pioneers of human thermodynamics, by topics in human thermodynamics, by new articles, etc., and listed either alphabetically or by importance, and are contained in the set of freely-available online Wetpaint wiki pages (eoht.info), that anyone can edit. The purpose of an encyclopedia, in the words of French philosopher and writer Denis Diderot, editor-in-chief of the famous Encyclopédie, is:

“to collect knowledge disseminated around the globe; to set forth its general system to the men with whom we live, and transmit it to those who will come after us, so that the work of preceding centuries will not become useless to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, becoming better instructed, will at the same time become more virtuous and happy, and that we should not die without having rendered a service to the human race.” [3]

The purpose of the encyclopedia of human thermodynamics is the same, but with specific focus on the multifarious theories, postulates, ideas, conceptions, and people connected to the century long study of the thermodynamic understanding of the place of the human being in the universe. In the words of American historian Henry Adams, “Man as a form of energy, is in most need of getting a footing on the law of thermodynamics.” [4]

History
The Encyclopedia of Human Thermodynamics was started in December of 2007 (see: progress report) by American chemical engineer Libb Thims in association with Russian physical chemist Georgi Gladyshev in efforts to organize thermodynamics. [8] The core of the EoHT is being built using Thims’ thermodynamic book collection, that he began collecting in 1995, along with his vast file of articles, facts, and notes to organize the set of known information on the thermodynamic understanding of human life, in conjunction with tools such as Google Book Search, Google Scholar, JSTOR, Amazon, etc., and local and university libraries and book stores in or around Chicago.

By December of 2008, the EoHT had 19 members and over 620+ articles. At the start of 2009, seeing that the topics connected to the thermodynamics of human existence seem to connect to all other branches and topics in thermodynamics, like a spider web, the following quote is beginning to summarize the direction that the EoHT is taking:

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Profession of the Law" (1886), American jurist [9]

The loose goal, however, at this point is to aim to publish hard copies of the EoHT when past the 1,000+ article mark. The cover page (above) shows the draft-version of the hardcover printed EoHT, which may be available in late 2010-2011.

Noted EoHT wiki contributors/members
The following individuals have contributed to the writing of the EoHT (in comment, discussion, or article addition), the main contributor being American chemical engineer Libb Thims, who has authored more than 98% of the articles in the EoHT:

Author	Joined	Qualifications	Publication	Publication
Libb Thims	24 Dec 07	Began working on the science of human chemical thermodynamics in 1995; founder of the Institute of Human Thermodynamics (2002) and Journal of Human Thermodynamics (2005), author of the first world's first-ever “human thermodynamics” chapter (Human Chemistry, ch. 16) (2007), and possessor of the world’s largest thermodynamics book collection (250+ books). Is tentatively writing the EoHT wiki as a precursor to a future textbook on human thermodynamics, based rigorously on Clausius, Gibbs, and Lewis.	Human Chemistry (2007)	The Human Molecule (2008)
Georgi Gladyshev	27 Dec 07	Author of the 1978 article "On the Thermodynamics of Biological Evolution", conceiver of hierarchical thermodynamics, and developer of the one of the first thermodynamics-based anti-aging theories.	Thermodynamic Theory of the Evolution of Living Beings (1997)
Ted Erikson	02 Jan 08	Completed MS in chemistry, thesis on: "Steady State Thermodynamics" (1959), at the Illinois Institute of Technology, under American physical chemist Ralph Tykodi.
John Schmitz	20 Apr 08	In his 2007 book, presented concepts such as "relative entropy" or human entropy diagrams.	The Second Law of Life (2007)
Jing Chen	04 Jan 08	Author of various articles on the thermodynamic aspects of human behaviors connected to economics, sexual reproduction (e.g. the 2001 article “Entropy Law and Human Behavior”), finance, sociology, among other topics.	The Physical Foundations of Economics - an Analytical Thermodynamic Theory (2005)
Viktor Minkin	05 Jan 08	One of the first to formulate technologically-based thermodynamic quantifications of individuals, such as personality typing via dermatoglyphics and human entropy calculations via vibraimaging, etc., to facilitate the assessment of thermodynamic states of individuals.
Ingo Müller	28 Jan 08	Known for his 2002 socio-thermodynamic theory of integration and segregation in population.	Energy and Entropy: a Universal Competition (2005)	A History of Thermodynamics - the Doctrine of Energy and Entropy (2007)
Robert Kenoun	10 Oct 08	Known for his social internal energy minimization theory.	A Proposition to Theory of History and Social Evolution (2006)
Wolfgang Muschik	18 Nov 08		Aspects of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics (1990)	Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics (editor)
Pierre Perrot	06 Jan 09	Author of the 1994 Dictionnaire de Thermodynamique, the world's first dictionary of thermodynamics.	A to Z of Thermodynamics (1998)	Thermodynamique Chimique (1998)
Angelo Letizia	01 Feb 09	In 2007 book, argues for an entropy-based theory of existence, an entropological explantion of the Darwinian "struggle for existence" postulate.	The Battle for Existence (2007)
Josip Stepanić	13 Apr 09	Noted for his 2000 social free energy theory.	Editor-in-chief of the Croatian journal Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems.
Jack Hokikian	01 May 09	In 2002 book, argues how the laws of thermodynamics govern economic systems, e.g. postulating government intervention may act to create turbulence-entropy in the socioeconomic system.	The Science of Disorder (2002)
Ronald Fox	16 Jun 09	His 1969 PhD dissertation was on Contributions to the Theory of Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics.	Energy and the Evolution of Life (1988)
Peter Pogany	01 Jul 09		Rethinking the World (2006)
Kenneth Bailey	20 Jul 09		Social Entropy Theory (1990)	Sociology and the New Systems Theory (1994)
Bruce Bathurst	31 Jul 09	Completed his MS and PhD theses on new theorems in equilibrium thermodynamics applied to igneous and metamorphic petrology.
Benjamin Kyle	08 Aug 09	Noted for his 1988 article “The Mystique of Entropy” (also published as an attached CD-ROM to his 1999 textbook Chemical and Process Engineering) in which discusses entropy in the context of religious thermodynamics, economic thermodynamics, etc., and also theorizes on entropy change ΔS in respect to a philosophy of life.	Chemical and Process Thermodynamics (1999)

Comparison to other Internet science sites:
As of May 2008, the fifth month of operation, the EoHT wiki had a total of 300+ articles, 13+ authors, growing at a rate of about 55-articles per month, and by December 2008, the EoHT wiki had a total of 600+ articles, 22+ authors. [2]

A comparitive example is the Encyclopedia of Earth (EoE), which launched in October 2006 with approximately 1,000 articles. As of April 2008, they had a listing of 700+ authors and 2,000+ articles. [5] The thermodynamics articles in the EoE, however, are notoriously filled with obvious errors. [7]

The best comparison example of a good online science encyclopedia is MathWorld created by American physicist and astronomer Eric Weisstein, the biggest math site on the Internet, which currently has more than 13,000 entries, the majority of which were authored by Weisstein. [6] As to the origins of MathWorld, beginning in 1995 Weisstein took the vast collection of mathematical facts that he had been accumulating since his teenage years and began to deploy them on the early Internet.

A newly developing thermodynamics wiki is the SklogWiki, started on February 15th, 2007 by Spanish physicist Carl McBride, in association with the Complutense University of Madrid, for people interested in thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and computer simulations, with particular focus on simple fluids, complex fluids, and soft condensed matter. The site, as of 2009, however, seems to consist of 950+ mostly-empty stub pages, linked to lists of either related topic articles or related journal articles. It now seems to be a journal article organization website.

A now-inactive ThermoWiki, having been an active wiki for a few months (May 27 – July 26) in 2007, was started by American chemical engineer J.M. Haile, which produced 47 articles.

See also
● Science wikis

References
1. See: list of top-100 (most active) articles in the encyclopedia of human thermodynamics.
2. See: the progress report for the origin and development of the encyclopedia.
3. Diderot, Denis and d'Alembert, Jean le Rond Encyclopédie. University of Michigan Library: Scholarly Publishing Office and DLXS.
4. Adams, Henry. (1910). A Letter to American Teachers of History. Google Books, Scanned PDF. Washington.
5. EoE: FAQs - Encyclopedia of Earth.
6. About Eric Weisstein, Creator of MathWorld.
7. (a) The EoE “History of Thermodynamics” article states that a G. Black (a Joseph Black typo) coined the term thermodynamics in 1770 (very incorrect).
(b) The EoE “Thermodynamics” article has a picture of Lazare Carnot (Sadi Carnot’s father) in the caption box listed as Sadi Carnot and states that thermodynamics was founded, between 1850-60, by Irish pneumatic tire inventor Robert William Thomson (whereas the correct name is William Thomson (a co-founder) or Lord Kelvin; and the founder is Rudolf Clausius).
8. (a) The wiki encyclopedia was spurred into existence, in a general sense, out of the two-year experience of Thims as an editor at Wikipedia, between 2005-2007, having authored about 180+ articles with over 8,500+ edits while there, and the resultant view or understanding that niche topics, such as human thermodynamics, human chemistry, and human molecule, etc., do not fit in well in a encyclopedia designed for general readers. (b) The concept of entropy is so corrupted in Wikipedia, to cite one example, that one cannot even cite Clausius in the definition of entropy. (c) In addition, during this period, Thims had been contemplating the idea of starting a new wiki to make the adding of terms in the IoHT Glossary easier and themed to a more community style of construction. Subsequently, the Wetpaint wiki was chosen as a platform for the new wiki. (d) Hence the EoHT wiki was born.
9. (a) Holmes, Oliver W. (1886). Collected Legal Papers (“The Profession of the Law: Conclusion of a Lecture Delivered to Under-graduates of Harvard University”, 17 February), (pg. 29-30). The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.
(b) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. – Wikipedia.

External links
● Encyclopedia Britannica (1911) - LoveToKnow1911
● Encyclopedia Britannica (current)
● Encarta
● Colombia Encyclopedia
● High Beam Encyclopedia - Encyclopedia.com
● BookRages
● Eric Weisstein’s World of: Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Scientific Biography
● Thermopedia - (limited free search; $3,500 cost: full search)
● Encyclopedia of Thermodynamics - Department of Geosciences, University of Basil.