What sits beneath the waterline?

Behaviour, action, communication and results are observable. Motivation, belief, identity, attention, habit, interference and the meaning of a situation are inferred through evidence.

The iceberg is useful because it slows the impulse to treat visible behaviour as self-explanatory. It is also limited. Items beneath the line are not one scientific construct, and a diagram cannot make a hidden cause directly observable.

Use the waterline to organise questions, not to declare certainty. A proposed mechanism earns confidence through comparison, prediction and fair testing.