EX: The Editor has asked me to explain why I – a physical scientist – was chosen to be President of an Anthropological institute – and why I accepted the appointment. The Board of Directors will have to be asked why they selected me for this position. On the other hand, I may be able to explain why I accepted this offer despite my present joint appointment as Professor in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Biophysics at the University of Illinois – two disciplines which are by no means linked to anthropology in any obvious way. Permit me to go back a bit more than half a century to show that this apparent mesalliance is in fact a legitimate affair.

Key words: machine translation, cybernetics

Vaihinger’s “as if” philosophy has value for psychology. Language need not be employed objectively nor phenomenologically. It can be used invitationally – ”a verb could be cast in a form which would suggest to the listener that a certain novel interpretation of an object might be entertained.”