Physical science paradigms, in the Kuhnian, sense are not easy to come around-history says it takes about 2000 years to "invent" a new one.
When Gallileo introduced the new physical science project he put 2 new postulates:
** description of nature to be founded on motion - motion is fundamental to this science
** the role of time in description of phenomena
In the Aristotelian paradigm (400bc to 1600ac), the project was based on 4 categories of change and 4 substances, motion was secondary type of change and Galilean motion a mere local motion of spatial type.
Recently quantum gravity tgeorists of the causal sets school talk about lack of motion in the high energies or quantum domain dominated stages of evolution of universe.
Do you know of any other paradigms that are not giving fundamental role to motion?
The ancient Greek philosophers interpreted change in terms of motion.
Until today, scientists think of it as such.
Thus, only static, un-changing things might not fall under the paradigm of motion.
E.g., the field of statics can be treated without motion.
But even static phenomena are often interpreted in terms of a balance of flows. Therefore, the concept of motion is even used in static situations.
Moreover, even complete standstill can be interpreted from the framework of motion: It is a motion with a velocity of zero.
Similarly, optics can be treated phenomenologically without reference to the motion of light, by describing the images produced in a given setup. However, motion is still necessary to tackle optics, because optics requires the movement of the experimenter during setup, observation, and measurement.
Given this, I think no paradigm of physics will go without motion.
However, it is interesting to note that the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides considered everything in nature to be one. In this one-ness of being, there was no logical place for change. Therefore, Parmenides treated change, and motion, as an illusion.
So, the question then becomes, which philosophies existed before Socrates; and which of those philosophies rejected the concept of motion?
Similarly, which philosophies exist in the non-Western world, and which of those do not rely on the idea of motion?
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