1. Origins

The term “scientology,” meaning “the science of science,” was used as early as 1934 for the title of a book by the philosopher A. Nordenholz. It is uncertain whether the American writer L. Ronald Hubbard (1911–86), the founder of Scientology, knew this work. In Scientology, which Hubbard viewed as a kind of superscience, he aimed to liberate the human spirit by his “religi…