# Quotes from Williamson #quote #paper/generatingphilosophy ### from Widening the Picture, chapter 9 of [[The Philosophy]] of Philosophy > "At first sight, mathematics [[looks like]] a paradigm of a purely deductive form of inquiry. Mathematical journals are filled with deductive proofs of theorems. However, those deductive proofs ultimately rely on first principles, principles for which no further deductive proof is expected, even on demand." (p. 358) > > "Unsurprisingly, abduction in philosophy is and should be less 'pure' than in mathematics. [[The evidence]] on which it does and should depend is often exogenous, generated from outside the discipline itself. It is perfectly proper for philosophers of time to appeal to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, for philosophers of perception to use experimental results from the psychology of perception, and for political philosophers to consider the historical outcomes of attempts to apply various political theories." (p. 362)