However, they do not always remain as personal behavior since they may be recorded and embodied in descriptive terms or formulae. Then they become behavioral products open to the consideration and acceptance by other individuals. Thus scientific assumptions as products take on a life of their own and survive as cultural institutions. Thus for the type of points, lines, and planes that concerned Euclid his axioms still are functional and useful. An invariable feature of scientific axioms is their reciprocity with confrontable things and events which serve as the external stimuli for constructional behavior.
Scientific axioms contrast sharply with autistic or traditional propositions.
It is this trait that lends longevity to basic axioms by comparison with such occasional behaviors as styles or fashions. We have mentioned above the circumstance that often scholars do not realize that they are oblivious concerning axioms as assumptions. We cannot overlook the observer's conclusion that inattention to basic assumptions can result in fallacious and misleading results from experimentation and interpretation. On the other hand it is clear how the advancement of a science can be facilitated by an adequate alertness to the proper attitudes involved in investigations and the things and events worked with. The fact that basic axioms are a heritage from former intellectual periods and are embodied in letters has given rise to the notion that some at least of psychological axioms are a priori.