Which sciences are welcome?
A now-deleted question involved archaeology, linguistics, and history. There were some downvotes and critical comments, and the author deleted the question. I don't know whether the downvotes were because of the scope or for other reasons, but it sent me to the FAQ to see what we say about our scope, and it talks about science broadly.
I'm wondering if we have some people who think this community is about hard sciences and others who think it's about any sciences. I've been assuming the latter, but I don't see where we actually say so, and perhaps I've misunderstood.
Which sciences are in scope?
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That question was off topic for two reasons:
- There was no speculation. Paraphrasing loosely, this site is about "what if" questions with a foundation in science.
- It was about history. This is not what was envisioned by scientific speculation. Historical speculation is a very different field that we don't want to get into because there is usually no way to judge the results of making minor changes to history. There are so many possible outcomes, that you can usually construct a scenario for any result you like.
The problem with speculation about history is that you can't use the laws of physics and other sciences to judge what would happen. You are dealing with how human beings might have reacted to hypothetical situations. This only leads to pointless arguments about how plausible one reaction is versus another, which can never be settled. We don't want to go down this rathole.
Myself, I think that all sciences are in scope on this site. (We're already barely getting any traffic; artificially restricting scope further probably won't help much with that.) The way I see it is: if it can be reasoned about using the scientific method, then it probably won't be off topic just because it's about the wrong scientific field. If we allow questions about the biology of shapeshifters, then categorically excluding questions about, say, archaeology hardly makes sense.
It stands to reason that the harder sciences will to some degree likely be easier to extrapolate from and speculate about while providing concrete reasoning, but that's about the type of answers that can be given with reasonable effort, not subject scope per se. This may be more of a consideration in the Rigorous Science category, but even then, only insofar as answers are concerned. A Rigorous Science question can ask for something for which no answer can be provided given the requirements for answers in that category; in that case, the person asking the question won't get what they're after, but that doesn't make the question itself off topic even for that category.
That said, regarding the specific question that prompted you to ask this question, for me the issue with that one isn't so much the specific scientific field it's about, but that it appears to be asking about historical fact: which of two trade centers was more important for the ruling class at some unspecified point in time, given this potentially partial list of measurable criteria for "importance"? None of the criteria listed seem particularly speculative to me; difficult to find data on, perhaps, but not speculative. Personally, I fail to see any speculative element to that question, which may well have been why it was poorly received here.
Had there been, say, a Chinese History Codidact (which, of course, there isn't at this time), it probably would have fit right in there with only minor tweaks.
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