Using I2C to keep track of position of slaves I am trying to flesh out my ideas for an electronics project and this question seems to be the main hangup. Is it possible, in the I2C protocol, to figure out the order in which the slaves are chained to the host? For example if I have 5 arduinos strung together by their serial and clock lines I want the master to be able to see that Arduino 1 is in position 1, Arduino 2 is in position 2... And so on. But if I switch Arduino 1 and 2 I want the master to know that Arduino 1 is in position 2 and Arduino 2 is in position 1.

I assume this isn't possible because all of the arduinos are connected to the same data and clock. So does anyone have any other protocols or algorithms in mind where I could do this. I was thinking I could have one Arduino talk to it's neighbors somehow and waterfall data down the line until it gets to it's destination. But I'm curious to see what y'all come up with.
This is indeed not possible.  I2C was meant for short on-the-same-board communications and though it's sometimes also extended to near-board communications, it still has no facility for position sensing.  Each slave  simply listens for an address and then responds to commands sent for that address.

Slaves can "stretch the clock" to slow down things, but cannot otherwise make themselves known so long as they are not mastering the bus.  In any case, even if bus mastering is assigned round-robin, only presence can be determined, not the position in any chain.