Mapping the aliran of the academic discipline of entrepreneurship: A ...

2.1 Developing a model of discourses and disciplines
2.1.1 Ontic states, ontic knowledge, ontologies and disciplines.
2.1.2 Discourse – the intermediate states
2.1.3 Discip lines – power of the right
2.1.4 Citations and good form
2.1.00 This chapter focuses on the development of a model to illustrate the differences
between ontic states, discourses (discursive states) and disciplines (epistemic states), based
on the varying de gree of conceptualisation or contextua lisation of knowledge. The
taxonomy used in this dissertation and more particularly the inter-relationship between the
elements of the taxonomy is illustrated graphically. A model of the nesting of knowledge is
developed where disciplines are nested within discourses which in turn are nested within
ontic states. What is stressed is that epistemology is the contextualisation of ontological
dom ains within the discipline, whereas in the discourse there is ‘an account of’ by way of a
‘-logy’ of the relationships that manifest themselves in the discourse. The ontic state is a
larger less-defined mass that can conceivably contain lost knowledge as well as knowledge
that has not yet been accounted nor included in a ‘-logy’.
2.1.1 Ontic states, ontic knowledge, ontologies and disciplines.
2.1.1.00 This section clarifies the difference between ontic states and ontology and uses
the entity of the ontic state to work towards defining the entity of the discipline, as an
epistemic state.
2.1.1.01 Heidegger uses the terms “logical, ontological and ontical” [Heidegger, 2002,
p162] in order to try to de fine the various entities of knowledge. However, while he ties
logic to truth and takes it out of the metaphysical realm of ontology, he fails to clearly
define the difference between ontical and ontological.
2.1.1.02 For a better idea of what is ontical, I refer to Primas’ discussion on ontic states.
Ontic states describe all properties of a physical system exhaustively.
(“Exhaustive” in this context means that an ontic state is “precisely the way it is”,
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