ABSTRACT
Epistemology is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary of 2004, the ‘theory or science of the method or grounds of knowledge’. If research aims to produce knowledge, then it has to rely on an implicit or explicit epistemology. I follow Chua (1986) in distinguishing between epistemology and methodology, where the former refers to the principles of knowledge, the latter to ways of acquiring it. Epistemology is closely linked to ontology. One can only gain knowledge about entities that exist. In return, one needs to have a way of gaining knowledge in order to make statements about whether something exists. While the exact relationship between given ontologies and epistemologies is not always clear-cut, it is important to note that every epistemology requires a corresponding ontology (Iivari et al., 1998). There is no ontology-free epistemology (see Feyerabend, 1980).
