SCIENTOLOGY AS A PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE, PSYCHOLOGY, OR RELIGION
by Frank Gordon USA

Hubbard gave a number of definitions for Scientology:

As a Philosophy(1)
Philosophy is: The love, study, or pursuit of wisdom(2), or of knowledge of things and their causes, whether theoretical or practical.

He then goes on to give three distinguishing principles of his own branch of philosophy, which he names "Scientology:"

1.Wisdom is meant for anyone who wishes to reach for it, 2.it must be capable of being applied, and 3.any philosophic knowldge is only valuable if it is true or if it works.

See also Wll Durant's comments(3): "..philosophy accepts the hard and hazardous task of dealing with problems not yet open to the methods of science - problems like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, order and freedom, life and death; so soon as a field of inquiry yields knowledge susceptible of exact formulation it is called science. Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art(4); it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement."

As a Science(5)
   Then, "'Scientology' is a new word which names a new science... a science is not merely a collection of facts, neatly arranged. An essential of a science is that observations give rise to theories which, in turn, give rise to new observations."

See also the essay on scientific methodology by John W. Campbell, Appendix II of DMSMH(3), which was omitted in some editions.

As a Psychology
Rather surprisingly, in Fundmentals of Thought, Ron states, "scientology is that branch of psychology which treats of human ability."

As a Relgion(6)
Hubbard later defines scientology as a religion and asserts that it is a religious philosophy since it studies spiritual manifestations, researches the nature of the spirit, and has exercises devoted to the rehabilitation of spiritual abilities.

He does not mention this, but as a religion it would also have a bureaucracy, and an authoritarian system of required belief (dogma).

Conclusions
This extensive range of definitions seems to be a search for that datum which most satisfies Logic 10.(7)

My personal choice
Scientology is the science (and its applied arts(4) or technology) of aligning and organizing any body of knowledge, with the help of the Logics.(8)

So it could be called the science of sciences, or knowing about (a science) how to know (another science). This is not an easy concept to grasp or to articulate. Thus, his difficulty in finding that key datum which satisfies the requirements of Logic 10.

And here we have a disagreement which has not been made explicit; to many of the Independents, scientology is a science; but to the CofS it's a religion. This is a vast difference in approach, especially if it has not been recognized and clarified.
 

1 See "My Philosophy," Tech Vol VI, p.1

2 Wisdom, desire coordinated in the light of all experience. See footnote 3.

3 From "The Philosophic Method" discussed in Appendix I in Dianetics, The Modern Science of Mental Health, by Will Durant.

4 Art, skill in the use and practical application of a science. From "The Philosophy of Rhetoric," Boston: Crosby & Ainsworth, 1866. An excellent example of rational scholarly thought by John Bascom. I would call this book "a theta deposit."

5 From "What is Scientology?" Tech Vol I, p.268.

6 HCOB Apr 1967, "Religious Philosophy and Religious Practice," Tech Vol VI, p.195

7 Logic 10: The value of a datum is established by the amount of alignment (relationship) it imparts to other data.

In this case, looking for a key valuable datum for Ron's "What have I done?" or "What am I doing?" in terms of existing frameworks.

But he had somehow moved beyond these frameworks to something like an overview, philosophy, or a science of science; and therefore to a kind of meta (Gk. above, beyond, higher) level. Thus his continuing search for "What is this thing I've produced?"

8 a Logic: a guiding or organizing principle for aligning and establishing a coherent body of knowledge. A clarified and codified heuristic.