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Example questions:

"Cathedral architects in the European Middle Ages used straight-edge and compass geometric construction in their work; to what extent was their intellectual tradition distinct from or informed by the academics working in mathematics or the classical mathematical treatises?"

"What's the earliest known use of a water mill to power a saw?"

"What do we know about loom widths in late 14th century? Particularly those that might have been used to produce the clothing textiles that wound up in Zürich (wherever they might be produced)?"

Proposal: History of Science And Mathematics

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    A good question. Your first sample is, in my opinion, spot on. The samples ascend from what I think is on topic to the edge and past the edge of very much being migrated to History main. I see loads of great questions coming from the history of engineering, and again you are showing me how it is possible to formulate an engineering question that is completely off topic here, but very much on topic somewhere else. It is also possible to modify a question to be totally on topic here. The second and third are very on topic in HSE as is.
    – J. W. Perry
    May 16 '14 at 0:01
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    I think most of engineering topics will relate to math and science.
    – Jasser
    Oct 10 '14 at 5:46
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I would think that the history of engineering would be on-topic to the extent that it interacted with science and/or math. Which is a huge category.

As a practical matter, if someone posted a question about, say, the history of the development of the computer, I wouldn't downvote it.

What's the policy/philosophy in SE about cross-posting? Say I had a question about history of LISP. I'd be inclined to look for an SE site on computer languages, and try to tag my question with a history tag (assuming that tag exists). But if I didn't get any useful answers there, I might consider posting to this site, just guessing at its collective expertise. That is, assuming this sort of cross-posting is socially acceptable.

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    Cross-posting is very strongly frowned upon, because it duplicates the work for answerers.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    May 30 '14 at 19:54
  • OK, thanks for the link. It seems what I really meant was migrating the question, not cross-posting, which appears to be OK.
    – Michael Weiss
    May 30 '14 at 19:57
  • +1 "for huge category" but not all of it.
    – Jasser
    Oct 10 '14 at 5:44

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