The scientific methodology based on two descriptive levels, ontic (reality asit is ) and epistemic (observational), is briefly presented. FollowingSchr\"odinger, we point to the possible gap between these two descriptions. Ourmain aim is to show that, although ontic entities may be inaccessible forobservations, they can be useful for clarification of the physical nature ofoperational epistemic entities. We illustrate this thesis by the concreteexample: starting with the concrete ontic model preceding quantum mechanics(the latter is treated as an epistemic model), namely, prequantum classicalstatistical field theory (PCSFT), we propose the natural physicalinterpretation for the basic quantum mechanical entity - the quantum state("wave function"). The correspondence PCSFT to QM is not straightforward, itcouples the covariance operators of classical (prequantum) random fields withthe quantum density operators. We use this correspondence to clarify thephysical meaning of the pure quantum state and the superposition principle - byusing the formalism of classical field correlations.
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