by Caspar G.M. de Rijk, Ph.E.

Let me start off with a normative statement about what the word Scientology should mean.

Scientology should be the term reserved for a senior multi-disciplinary science that studies science itself. That would include the philosophy of science, its religious aspects, the psychology, ponerology, the economics, motivations and sanity of scientists, the fixed ideas and paradigms of science, its history, its methods and limitations.

It could have a second meaning that would embrace epistemology, the philosophy/science of knowledge.

History

It is a matter of historical record that there was a scientology before Hubbard confiscated the word as SCIENTOLOGY®. The the Google N-gram below confirms what follows.

The most obvious predecessor is the subject created by Dr. A. Nordenholz in his work which was published in 1934 under the German title: Scientologie Wissenschaft der Beschaffenheit und Tauglichkeit des Wissens. This book was later translated by McPheeters, and is now known as ‘Scientology: the science of the character and soundness of knowing and knowledge.’

I have recently discovered that the word scientology, in a scientific context, had been used even as early as 1871, by a Stephen Pearl Andrews.  Andrews was one of the first to use the word “scientology“. The word is defined in the 1871 book ‘The Primary Synopsis of Universology and Alwato: The New Scientific Universal Language’.*

For all these reasons and the obvious fact that names of sciences cannot be trademarked, the Scientology® should be vacated immediately and I would sign any petition to the trademark office requesting that the trademark be cancelled, for the above and humanitarian reasons.

Hubbard – before, during and after

According to L.R. Hubbard Scientology meant the science of knowing how to know, further defined as the study and handling of the spirit in relationship to itself, universes and other life. The obvious meaning of the word is the science studying knowledge and science in general. Scientology sounds a lot better than epistemology and would have been the word of choice if it had not been contaminated by the cult.

Pre-Scientology

Before Scientology there was Dianetics and the publication of the book first announcd in Astounding Science Fiction magazin, is what started the movement. Dianetics was considered by scientologists to contain all the basic principles of what later developed into Scientology. The development of Hubbard’s dianetics system appears to be derived from earlier known therapies through an eclectic approach.  Some of the possible sources are listed below.

Survival as the aim of life was a well-established idea elaborated in the works of Darwin, Bergson, Jung and Adler.  Hubbard assumed that heredity was not that all important factor and that external factors get internalized and mold the individual to a greater degree. This aligns to Pavlov’s concept of conditioning. The idea that the unconsciousness periods – comanomes, later engrams–could be addressed goes back to Jung at least. The “reactive mind” (the total of all engrams) was it appears a combination of Freud’s “unconscious” and Pavlov’s conditioning. Abreaction in the meaning of a vivid, often cathartic return of painful emotion(s) from past circumstances was known in psycho analysis. And so was the influence of verbal content and words triggering incidents or associate with illness. The dianetic reverie was little different from a mild hypnotic condition. The psychoanalytic evaluation practices were however severely frowned upon in dianetic therapy which favored a more Rogerian person-centered non evaluative approach.

In other words the entirety of Hubbard’s Dianetics did arise amidst a scientific and cultural context and past track that was almost completely denied or ignored by the author.

to be continued…
see the book: ‘Critique of Pure Scientology’ published Dec 2020.