Scientology

Although today associated almost exclusively with Hubbard, the word "scientology" predates his usage by several decades. An early use of the word was as a neologism[1] in an 1871 book by the American anarchist Stephen Pearl Andrews presenting "the newly discovered Science of the Universe".[2] Philologist Allen Upward used the word "scientology" in his 1901 book The New Word as a synonym for "pseudoscience,"[3] and this is sometimes cited as the first coining of the word.[3] In 1934, the Argentine-German writer Anastasius Nordenholz published a book using the word positively: Scientologie, Wissenschaft von der Beschaffenheit und der Tauglichkeit des Wissens ("Scientologie, Science of the Constitution and Usefulness of Knowledge").[4] Nordenholz's book is a study of consciousness, and its usage of the word is not greatly different from Hubbard's definition, "knowing how to know"[5] (from epistemology). Whether Hubbard was aware of these earlier uses is unknown.


[1] Neologism
In psychiatry, the term, neologism, is used to describe the use of words that only have meaning to the person who uses them, independent of their common meaning. This is considered normal in children, but a symptom of thought disorder (indicative of a psychotic mental illness, such as schizophrenia) in adults.

People with autism also may create neologisms.

Use of neologisms may also be related to aphasia acquired after brain damage resulting from a stroke or head injury.