Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics, and Scientology’s Foundational Doctrine

This paper brings new insight to academic understandings of the bricolage of ideas L. Ron Hubbard assembled in his development of Scientology as a syncretic religion. It demonstrates that, in addition to having been influenced by science fiction, popular psychology and Western esotericism, as has been explored in the existing literature (Melton 2000, Lewis 2009, Urban 2011, Frenchkowski 2016), Hubbard was also influenced by certain popular post-WWII ideas about science, technology and the universe. In particular, the research presented here demonstrates that Hubbard’s 1951 development and introduction of the foundational Scientology doctrine known as the Theta-MEST theory, which establishes the religion’s basic metaphysical propositions as well as its soteriological logic, relied on ideas connected with the then-new field of cybernetics and explicitly drew from the work of the mathematician and author credited with naming and popularizing the field, Norbert Wiener.