Scientology: A History of Man
book by L. Ron Hubbard
Scientology: A History of Man is a book by L. Ron Hubbard, first published in 1952 under the title What to Audit by the Scientific Press of Phoenix. According to the author, it provides "a coldblooded and factual account of your last sixty trillion years." It has gone through many editions since its first publication and is a key text of the Church of Scientology. The book has been ridiculed by scholars, journalists and critics of Scientology for its unusual writing style and pseudoscientific claims; it has been described as "a slim pretense at scientific method ... blended with a strange amalgam of psychotherapy, mysticism and pure science fiction; mainly the latter."
Publication history
According to Christopher Evans, the book reportedly originated in Scientology auditing sessions held in Wichita, Kansas in early 1952, involving Hubbard and his personal auditor, Perry Chapdelaine. Chapdelaine said that Hubbard would "settle himself on a couch with a tape recorder handy and an 'auditor' who would be expected to provide appropriate feedback. In no time a flow of introspection - like the free association characteristic of a psychoanalytic session - would begin."
In a different account, Hubbard's son, L. Ron Hubbard Jr. (otherwise known as "Nibs," or Ronald DeWolf) and Hubbard senior's medical officer, Jim Dincalci, have both stated that the book's content originated when Hubbard fed his son amphetamines:
[Hubbard] gave his son Nibs some amphetamines, and Nibs started talking, he said, started really going talking fast, from the speed. And he kept talking, he kept talking, and his dad kept giving him speed and all of a sudden he was talking about his history, when he was a clam and all these different situations in early Earth. And out of that came History of Man.
This material was first released as four lectures which Hubbard delivered to Scientologists on March 10, 1952.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Scientology: A History of Man” as book by L. Ron Hubbard. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as book by L. Ron Hubbard. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7433849. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Scientology: A History of Man” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.