 In addition to the development of formal logic, another aspect of deductivism is its emphasis on ‘foundations’. The reason for this is that the passage from axioms to theorem is straightforward, in principle, since it is a matter of logical derivation. Indeed there is nothing distinctively mathematical involved in this transition. Hence attention is shifted to the starting point of the deductive process, namely the axioms. And if these axioms are themselves theorems of some more basic theory, then this pursuit of a secure starting point can be pursued down through a hierarchy of ever more foundational mathematical theories.