Many commentators on the natural sciences in Islamic history have posited that the doctrine of occasionalism set out by the widespread Ash'ari school of theology was an impediment to an understanding of nature due to its rejection of secondary causality. This excursus reviews the attention paid by Ash'ari thinkers to both God's habitual action in the world and His wisdom in ordering this habitual action to argue that occasionalism can be understood as an equally viable basis for studying natural phenomena.