History of European philosophy during the 17th century. Begins with the burning of Giordano Bruno in February 0f 1600, & ends with Voltaire's 1755 musing that Newton would have been burned had he been born in Portugal. The big question that the 17th century philosophers got stuck on seems to have boiled down to: “Why does anything happen at all?” During the subsequent years (at least by Voltaire's account) Newton was considered to have supplanted all of the earlier philosophers by simply dismissing the question & focusing on empirical observation of natural laws, such as physics.