Polanyi had long led an opposition to the notions of Planned Science.在很久之前，波兰尼带头反抗政府的“计划科学”。Even during the bine political and scientific philosophy, marshalling a variety of arguments against various kinds of determinism.在战争时期，他成立了“自由科学会”，战争结束后，他试图将政治与科学哲学相结合，提出了许多观点，以反对各种形式的决定论。In particular, he seized on Godels theorem as a proof that mind would do something that was beyond any mechanical system, it was this subject that most engaged Alan and Polanyi in discussion.特别是他利用哥德尔定理，表明人的思维可以做到一些任何机械系统都做不到的事，这个看法促使图灵与波兰尼进行了一些讨论。Alan would run over to the Polanyi home, which was not far from his lodgings at Hale.图灵跑到波兰尼家，他家就在图灵住的地方附近。Once Polanyi visited Alan, only to find him practising the violin in freezing cold, not bothering or not daring to ask the landlady for proper heat.还有一次，波兰尼去拜访图灵，他惊讶地看到，图灵在冰冷的房间里拉小提琴，也不知道他是因为懒，还是不好意思找女房东给他生炉子。He rejected Eddingtons argument for free will from the Uncertainty Principle, But, unlike Eddington, he thought that the mind could interfere with the motions of molecules,波兰尼反对爱丁顿的基于不确定性原理的观点，他认为自由意识可以改变分子的运动，Polanyi also favoured an extension of the Jabberwocky argument, that science was all in the mind anyway, and had no meaning apart from the semantic function which the human mind alone could supply.他还很喜欢关于量子力学的“无意义的废话”这个说法，也就是说，任何科学都是存在于人的思维之中，如果人类不给它赋予特定的语义，那么它就没有任何意义。Karl Popper, who held similar views, said in 1950 that It is only our human brain which may lend significance to the calculators senseless powers of producing truths.波普尔也持有类似的观点，他在1950年说，计算机必须依靠人类的大脑才能具有能力，而人类的大脑则可以凭空产生真理。Popper and Polanyi both held that people had an inalienable responsibility, and that science only existed by virtue of conscious, responsible decisions.波普尔和波兰尼都认为，人类有着无可替代的使命，而科学正是因此而存在。Polanyi held that science should rest on a moral basis.波兰尼认为，科学应该基于道德基础。My opposition to a universal mechanical interpretation of things, he wrote, ... also implies some measure of dissent from the absolute moral neutrality of science.他写道：“我反对用通用机器来解释自然……科学必须保持绝对的道德中立性。”There was a schoolmasterish tone to this responsibility that was rather different from gentle Eddingtons vision of Mind-stuff perceiving the spiritual world.这套关于“使命”的说辞，很有一种公学教师的口吻，这与爱丁顿的温和观察截然不同。