Two views

Humans have a tendency of trying to make sense of something by thinking of it from one of two basic viewpoints: detailed or general. At the level of detail we can't see the overall structure, and vice-versa. Glance at the two maps you can see here : one shows the outline; the other all the detail. The first represents top-down thinking ; the other is bottom-up thinking .
The deductive approach starts from an abstract level and works its way down to applications. However, if we think inductively then we have a preference for gathering details and building up the general picture from them.
Good thinking skills are inclusive and use both approaches.

Tom