I think some people start from equal temperament. Then define a scale as the subset of those 12 nodes. Any other subset of frequencies is just considered a "we

I think some people start from equal temperament. Then define a scale as the subset of those 12 nodes. Any other subset of frequencies is just considered a "weird tuning" rather than a scale in its own right. That's my best steel man. As you can see they deleted the question after a lot of discussion.