For example, to view nature as created ex nihilo implies that the universe is contingent and rational, and these views provide two of the fundamental philosophical assumptions on which modern science is based. By the creation ex nihilo tradition I mean to include its long and complex development by Jewish, Muslim and Christian theologians and philosophers during what is often called the Patristic and Middle Ages. Of course other sources of these assumptions were contributory, but it is important to remember that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, has, in historical fact, served in this way. See for example Michael Foster, "The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Science," in Creation: The Impact of an Idea, Daniel O’Connor and Francis Oakley, eds. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969); Eugene M. Klaaren, Religious Origins of Modern Science: Belief in Creation in Seventeenth-Century Thought (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1977); David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Gary B. Deason, "Protestant Theology and the Rise of Modern Science: Criticism and Review of the Strong Thesis," in The CTNS Bulletin 6.4 (Autumn, 1986); Christopher Kaiser, Creation and the History of Science (London: Marshall Pickering, 1991).