• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.148
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• pp.157-181
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• 2018

The aim of this essay is to identify elements of methodologies to investigate the development of Newtonian dynamics. This methodology involves the transformation and synthesis of preceding theories. My essay attempts to confirm my assertion by analyzing historical case of Newton's discovery of his dynamics. While discovering his mechanistic theory, Newton reconstructed theoretical concepts and structures of intellectual predecessors, such as Aristotle, Descartes, Galileo, and Kepler. Newton's synthesis was possible only after carefully reconstructing the appropriate and useful ideas of previous natural philosophers' ideas. As a result, Newtonian dynamics are completed with these modified and integrated concepts incorporated into Newton's law of motion and space-time concepts. This study consists of two parts. First, Lakatos' research program has been applied in order to analyze the structure of Newtonian dynamics. Second, the aforementioned methodologies of discovery are distilled from the case study.