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While I understand that Starfinder's lore is somewhat separated from Pathfinder's for Gap reasons, I would presume that, moving on to use a lot of 2e's assets, we're "rewiring" the magic system to fit the Four Traditions - which, in turn, means that we're using the Four Essences that they are built upon as a concept.
For those unfamiliar (or a little rusty on that lore tidbit), the Four Traditions of magic (Arcane, Primal, Divine, and Occult) are the way they are because their practitioners manipulate two of these four essences primarily, if not exclusively. The four essences that pre-Gap scholars believed made up reality (and thus, that magic manipulates) are mind, matter, spirit, and life. The Four Traditions of Magic each primarily manipulate two of these essences - Arcane affects mind and matter, Primal affects matter and life, Divine affects life and spirit, and Occult affects spirit and mind. This is the reason why most healing spells are locked to the Primal and Divine lists, for example - at least ludonarratively.
With that preface out of the way, I've noted some spells and things which I feel don't necessarily fit into the typical tradition's "lore aesthetic". While I acknowledge this has happened before in P2e (like some of the spells in Howl of the Wild or Rage of Elements) and that the entire essence assumption could be outdated by in-universe standards, the playtest document doesn't state much to go on in the flavor front, so I can only really use this as a baseline for what feels "off" to me.
>Firstly, some Paradox weirdness. The Anomaly and Gap-influenced paradoxes, from their flavor texts and granted warp spells, seem to suggest that their granted tradition lists should be swapped. Typically speaking, time shenanigans can both occupy Arcane and Occult primarily (and rarely in Primal and Divine), but with the granted spells and Warp Spell flavor of basically being a nexus for multiple alternate realities just SCREAMS Occult to me, not Arcane. In a similar manner, Gap-Influenced's spells focus on physically deleting both matter and memory (as well as having a very classic scholarly "wizard-type" flavor text) suggests it feels more Arcane to me.
>Rhythm being a Primal connection and Shadow being a Divine one feels real weird. The Song of the Spheres seems to be reflected in most other spells and such as a Divine/Occult thing? Whereas Shadows being Divine feels pretty wrong, since that's usually the domain of Arcane/Occult, though the specific mention of the Netherworld suggests that perhaps we're working with the Vitality/Void aspect of shadows. I understand that Mystic probably won't have Arcane, and the playtest material suggests Occult is less of a focus to the Mystic than Primal/Divine. Perhaps Rhythm should be Divine and Shadow should be Primal? After all, First World concepts tend to be Primal, and our new "planar map" shows that the Netherworld is to the Void what the First World is to Creation's Forge.
>As for spells specifically... Detect Thoughts feels more Arcane than Divine, since you're detecting minds, not life. Entropy Strike feels like it should be Primal since we're manipulating entropy of matter, and the Occult connection is only vague (entropy and time being related). Feline Senses is Divine for some reason? Gravity Field and Personal Gravity exclude Divine, yet Gravity Tether includes it for some reason. Recharge Weapon feels strange on the Occult list. Shifting Surge deals with changing a weapon's elemental damage which is NOT Occult's wheelhouse at all. Wave of Warning is a reskinned Chain Lightning, but it deals nonlethal mental damage and is described as "psychic energy", which is definitely more Occult than Primal.
And these are just the ones I've kinda fixated on, and are based on my interpretation/perception of the magical lore of Pathfinder/Starfinder. I'm sure my one, singular opinion will be regarded as fact and nobody will disagree with me whatsoever, but please feel free to discuss anyways! I think things like these are subtly important to the cohesion of the world that Paizo has built, and I'd like to see how others might view it.
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Sorry to hijack your discussion but it's something potentially related. Casters no longer get trained in their tradition's skill. Some subclasses are, but it's not universal. That is something every caster did in PF2e, including ones that arguably have no reason to be, such as Oracle and Sorcerer. It's a strange departure that rubs me the wrong way.
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OP has it right: although the 4-tradition and essence-based split is a significant improvement for caster diversity, traditions are still more tied to legacy spell lists than their assigned theme, and making each tradition's spell list conform more to their component essences would probably have them looking very different.
A lot of this stems from Pathfinder classes, where the arcane list was made to be the Wizard's spell list (which is why there's lots of necromantic and void stuff that really doesn't conform to material or mental essence), the primal list was made to be the Druid's spell list (which is why it lacks void spells, despite void being a subset of vital essence), and so on. In Starfinder, I think we're starting to see some interesting repercussions, where all of the weird, unexplained stuff is getting offloaded to occult (which risks making occult come up a lot given the sheer amount of weird unexplained stuff in outer space), and arcane is treated as the science-y tradition, irrespective of whether the science in question relates to anything material. Primal seems like a really hard tradition to integrate into a sci-fi setting, given how most of its theme and spells are defined around a terrestrial environment rather than the much larger natural world of the cosmos, which is probably why we're seeing the theme of music, which is normally attributed to divine and especially occult magic (Bards are the archetypal occult casters in Pathfinder), being used to integrate a primal subclass on the Mystic.
And with this in mind, I agree there's solid grounds to swap a few traditions around: Anomaly could very well work as an occult subclass, and Gap-Influenced could be arcane. Rhythm I think is definitely more a divine theme than a primal one, whereas shadow in the context of how it relates to vitality, void, and the Inner Sphere could work as primal. I unfortunately don't think spell lists will change to more accurately reflect their traditions until a later edition, but there's definitely a few adjustments that could be made to Starfinder's casters to make them fit a little better.
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I think what irks me the most about it is how inconsistent it is within even just the playtest. I could begrudgingly accept a small amount of nonconformity to the lore for an occasional throwback spell as long as it was, like, consistent and pretty spread out between optional splatbooks.
Here, though, in the same document, we've got spells that deal with controlling tech that are Arcane only, and then a couple pages down we've got a spell that controls tech that's arcane, divine, and occult? Gravity spells can't seem to decide whether they belong in the Divine list, psychic energy is regularly attributed to both Arcane and Occult but some of their standout spells are Divine and Primal.
Obviously, it's a playtest, so I'm not about to go on a rant or anything, but I feel like pointing it out is at least important so this doesn't happen in the Starfinder Player Core release. It may already only be a tenuous connection, but it's a good enough lore piece that I think would genuinely affect the verisimilitude of magic if we just started ignoring it more
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Make a list of all of these because you make a good point. All Telekenetic spells should be same tradition, all Vampiric spelsl should be, all Gravity spells should be, so forth.
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-Call Cosmos is really doing nothing more than pulling cosmic matter down from space, dealing only cold and fire damage - something usually governed by Arcane/Primal - yet it is on the Divine/Primal lists. Despite this, Pocket Vacuum (despite sharing a similar theme of creating localized outer space phenomena) is Divine/Primal/Arcane. Event Horizon is Primal only, yet Singularity Seed is Divine/Primal.
-As stated before, Detect Thoughts is a Divine/Occult spell despite Mind Reading from P2e and similar psychic thought spells being Arcane/Occult.
-Time-themed spell Time's Edge is Occult/Primal. A quick skim of AoN shows that most Time-adjacent spells in P2e are Occult/Arcane. In fact, the time-related areas of Witchwarper are Arcane/Occult.
-Akashic Download is Arcane/Occult, yet Akashic Revival is Divine/Occult, despite the text implying that both spells involve attaining information within the Akashic Record. Sift the Sphere is tangentially related, obtaining info from the local infosphere, and is Divine/Occult. Skim Data, on the other hand, is Arcane/Occult, and Speak with Computers is Arcane/Divine.
-Entropy-related spells Entropy Strike and Slice Reality are Arcane/Primal/Occult and Arcane/Divine/Occult, respectively. One could argue these are tangentially related to time spells, but both clearly involve the erosion of physical matter.
-Battle Sonata is Divine/Occult, whereas Sonic Scream is Arcane/Occult/Primal. Howl is Divine/Occult/Primal.
-Controlling tech creatures via Control Machine is Arcane/Occult, whereas controlling them via Destruction Protocol is Arcane only. I only
mention this because of how oddly similar these two spells are, yet apparently one is so different to be exclusive to Arcane.
-Gravity is Arcane/Occult/Primal when it's Personal Gravity, as is creating a localized Gravity Field. Gravity Tether is a poor name, as it's explicitly dealing with electromagnetic fields and deals electricity damage. It is still CALLED Gravity Tether, though, and is omni-traditional, so it's confusing on first read.
-Speaking of Howl, boy are spells to do with psychic/mental phenomena just ALL over the place. Howl is a psychic, compelling resonance, and is Divine/Occult/Primal as mentioned. Detect Thoughts has been mentioned. Logic Bomb is Arcane/Occult, Phantasmal Fleet is Arcane/Occult, Share Pain is Divine/Occult, Subjective Reality is Occult only. Telekinetic Strangulation is Divine/Occult while Telekinetic Tantrum is Arcane/Occult. Vibe Check is Occult only, whereas Wave of Warning is Divine/Primal. Mind Skewer gets a pass for mentioning it's either psychic information or divine judgements.
Mind you, I do not mind two spells sharing a themes with one being exclusive to a list (like Control Machine and Destruction Protocol), and there are ways to argue that many of these themes can fit into any of the essences, and therefore traditions.
It's just that many of these themes are consistent in flavor via their text and mechanics, yet somehow some spells are excluded from one list and yet not the other, such as Sonic Scream vs. Howl or Telekinetic Strangulation vs. Telekinetic Tantrum.