Well, yeah. Axioms are not deduced, they are the starting points for the various theories that are deduced from them. (There is not much you can deduce ex nih

Well, yeah. Axioms are not deduced, they are the starting points for the various theories that are deduced from them. (There is not much you can deduce ex nihilo.) Did you have some further point? If you were hoping that mathematics would have - or thinking that it _should_ have - some ontological foundation that is not in this sense "made up", I'm afraid it simply doesn't.