Sándor Ferenczi, the great representative of the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis, had a lifelong interest in psychical phenomena. Although his ideas on the psychoanalytical understanding of spiritualistic phenomena and telepathy were not developed theories, they had a strong influence on some representatives of psychoanalysis, and thus underlay the psychoanalytic interpretation of telepathy. Ferenczi’s ideas on telepathy were interwoven with his most important technical and theoretical innovations. Thus Ferenczi’s thoughts on telepathy say a lot about his psychoanalytical (...) thinking and attitudes, and illuminate the significance of his greatest innovations in the context of psychical research. (shrink)

Nicolas Abraham’s “Introducing Thalassa” contributed to the revival of Sàndor Ferenczi’s ideas in France from the 1960s and initiated a transformation in his own psychoanalytic thinking as the thalassal argument was brought into a new context. This article argues that Abraham’s work provides a pathway to not only remember, but also revitalise Ferenczi’s notion of trauma and its inscription in biological processes from events that have happened is species pre-history as well as personal history. Abraham rethinks this “biological (...) unconscious” through a unique conception of the symbol that is inherently unstable and always responding anew to trauma it also continually reformulates. This allows us to understand the body in different terms, away from a series of biological processes to which psyche can be reduced, towards a notion of the somatic that is eloquent and unpredictable and must be translated by the psyche and any apprehending discourse. This transformation made the body relevant once more in a French context that was suspicious of its blanket positing as the cause of psychical processes. Situating the origins of subjectivity in the somatic ever-displaces causal processes in the body so that we can never quite grasp these and must search for them across different, although related, levels of meaning. The search for origins is essential but never satisfactory hence my use of translation as a frame for understanding Abraham’s work; a process that is always unfinished and invites further response. (shrink)

O psicanalista húngaro Sándor Ferenczi elaborou uma teoria sobre a transição do princípio do prazer ao princípio de realidade, que permite complementar e aprofundar as hipóteses freudianas sobre esses princípios. De acordo com a sua teoria, esse processo envolve uma série de estágios, ao longo dos quais, gradualmente, a diferenciação entre o eu e o mundo externo é estabelecida e o sentimento de onipotência é abandonado. Freud e Ferenczi, contudo, não focaram a questão da maneira como o (...) desenvolvimento da linguagem verbal acompanha esse processo de transição entre os dois princípios, questão essa abordada pela psicanalista russa Sabina Spielrein. Esta autora complementa as teorias de Freud e Ferenczi, ao abordar o fenômeno em questão a partir de uma perspectiva diferente, ou seja, daquela do desenvolvimento da linguagem. Apesar da originalidade e da importância da contribuição de suas teorias para a compreensão do funcionamento mental, Ferenczi e, sobretudo, Spielrein são autores ainda pouco estudados, que merecem maior atenção e reconhecimento, o que justifica o resgate de suas teorias. Nesse artigo, abordamos algumas das hipóteses dos dois autores que permitem uma melhor compreensão do processo de diferenciação entre o eu e o mundo externo e de transição do princípio de prazer ao princípio de realidade. Nos baseamos na análise do texto de Ferenczi O Desenvolvimento do Sentido de Realidade e seus Estágios, de 1913, e nos textos de Spielrein O surgimento e o desenvolvimento da fala articulada e A origem das palavras infantis papai e mamãe, publicados, respectivamente, em 1920 e 1922. (shrink)

Auf dem Berliner IPV-Kongress lud Freud 1922 die psychoanalytische Gemeinschaft in Form eines Preisausschreibens ein, sich mit Problemen der psychoanalytischen Technik auseinanderzusetzen. Fokussiert auf die Frage der Deutung von inner- und außeranalytischen Übertragungen wird das Schicksal dieser Aufforderung nachgezeichnet, der 1924 als erste Otto Rank und Sándor Ferenczi nachkamen, 1927 gefolgt von Wilhelm Reich und – auf dem Gebiet der Kinderanalyse – Anna Freud und Melanie Klein. Der Streifzug durch die Geschichte der Technik zeigt, wie sich die 1927 (...) auf dem Gebiet der Kinderanalyse aufgebrochene Polarisierung hinsichtlich der Übertragungsdeutung mit der Arbeit Stracheys und spätestens seit den »controversial discussions« innerhalb der britischen Gesellschaft auf das Gebiet der Erwachsenenanalyse übertrug. Unter Berücksichtigung der Weiterentwicklung des Diskurses wird die Frage aufgeworfen, ob die starke Betonung der Übertragungsdeutung eine unterschiedliche Praxis widerspiegelt oder ob sie zur Marke einer bestimmten Schule geworden ist, die den Blick auf das Gemeinsame des psychoanalytischen Deutens, die Herstellung von Verbindungen, verstellt. (shrink)

What is hermeneutics? -- The suffering stranger and the hermeneutics of trust -- Sandor Ferenczi : the analyst of last resort and the hermeneutics of trauma -- Frieda Fromm-Reichmann : incommunicable loneliness -- D.W. Winnicott : humanitarian without sentimentality -- Heinz Kohut : glimpsing the hidden suffering -- Bernard Brandchaft : liberating the incarcerated spirit.

In the very last section of his 2001 interview with Elisabeth Roudinesco titled “In Praise of Psychoanalysis,” Jacques Derrida assumes the mantle of “friend of psychoanalysis.” This expression refers back, most immediately, to Roudinesco's allusion to Sandor Ferenczi's “beautiful idea” of founding a Society of Friends of Psychoanalysis that would bring together writers, artists, philosophers, and jurists interested in psychoanalysis. If Derrida modifies and transforms Roudinesco's expression, if he does not refer back to the plural phrase she has used, (...) it is because he is inflecting the phrase otherwise (he is not simply mentioning it, he is also altering it). In other words, the quotation marks around the phrase “friend of psychoanalysis” are what are called in English “scare quotes.”. (shrink)

Why does Kant, who extensively wrote on sexual life in all its diversity, never mention paedophilia? I elaborate a hypothesis on the basis of the work of Foucault and Hacking: paedophilia as a “possibility of personhood” only came into being at the end of the nineteenth century. This “possibility” is linked to the introduction of a “deployment of sexuality” over and against a “deployment of alliance.” It is only at the very moment that sexuality starts being conceived in terms of (...) feelings, fantasies, and capacities that can be different in adults and children that propositions on paedophilia become intelligible. This was not yet the case in Kant’s day. I illustrate the distinction between these two “deployments” further through analysis of the approach of the Hungarian psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi. Finally, I state that this debate should not be reduced to epistemology and that Foucault’s “deployments” or Hacking’s “possibilities of personhood” are rooted in the material conditions of our existence. (shrink)

In _Conceptual Issues in Psychoanalysis_, John Gedo's mastery of Freudian theory and broad historical consciousness subserve a new goal: an understanding of "dissidence" in psychoanalysis. Gedo launches his inquiry by reflecting expansively on recent assessments of Freud's character. His acute remarks on the intellectual and personal agendas that inform the portraits of Freud offered by Frank Sulloway, Jeffrey Masson, and Peter Swales pave the way for his own definition of psychoanalysis in historical context. Then, in topical studies on Sandor (...) class='Hi'>Ferenczi, Melanie Klein, and Heinz Kohut, he explicates the commonalities that bind together three generations of dissidents, each of whom undertook to supplant the edifice of hypotheses erected by Freud with alternative theories. Interspersed with these essays are quite insightful studies of Lou Andreas-Salome and David Rapaport, whom Gedo sees as "epistemological referees" attempting to reconcile viewpoints unique to their generations. In the second part of the book, Gedo argue that analysis now has the opportunity to move beyond this pattern of dissidence followed by mediation by drawing on observational research about infancy and early childhood to validate or refute its clinical hypotheses. In these chapters, Gedo offers critical commentary on recent efforts to extrapolate from infant research to the psychoanalytic theory of development. Only then does he offer his own measured estimation of the "legacy of infancy and the technique of psychoanalysis." This review of "the challenge of scientific method" as it bears on analysis culminates in concluding chapters that probe the status of analysis as a hermeneutic discipline and the contribution of analysis to "vocabularies of moral deliberation.". (shrink)

In _Conceptual Issues in Psychoanalysis_, John Gedo's mastery of Freudian theory and broad historical consciousness subserve a new goal: an understanding of "dissidence" in psychoanalysis. Gedo launches his inquiry by reflecting expansively on recent assessments of Freud's character. His acute remarks on the intellectual and personal agendas that inform the portraits of Freud offered by Frank Sulloway, Jeffrey Masson, and Peter Swales pave the way for his own definition of psychoanalysis in historical context. Then, in topical studies on Sandor (...) class='Hi'>Ferenczi, Melanie Klein, and Heinz Kohut, he explicates the commonalities that bind together three generations of dissidents, each of whom undertook to supplant the edifice of hypotheses erected by Freud with alternative theories. Interspersed with these essays are quite insightful studies of Lou Andreas-Salome and David Rapaport, whom Gedo sees as "epistemological referees" attempting to reconcile viewpoints unique to their generations. In the second part of the book, Gedo argue that analysis now has the opportunity to move beyond this pattern of dissidence followed by mediation by drawing on observational research about infancy and early childhood to validate or refute its clinical hypotheses. In these chapters, Gedo offers critical commentary on recent efforts to extrapolate from infant research to the psychoanalytic theory of development. Only then does he offer his own measured estimation of the "legacy of infancy and the technique of psychoanalysis." This review of "the challenge of scientific method" as it bears on analysis culminates in concluding chapters that probe the status of analysis as a hermeneutic discipline and the contribution of analysis to "vocabularies of moral deliberation.". (shrink)

Gedankenübertragung. Gegenübertragung. Thought-transference and counter-transference have rarely been considered together. One is a key instrument in much contemporary psychoanalytic practice and the other simply occultism. This essay traces the striking parallels in Sigmund Freud's interests in both. Its tale is the uncanny narrative of his essay ‘Psychoanalysis and Telepathy’. The story starts from Freud's engagements with Sándor Ferenczi and Carl Jung to speculate that his unpublished paper may be the article on counter-transference he promised but never wrote. The (...) repressed returns in the history and practice of psychoanalysis — and in Shoshana Felman's uncanny reading effect. (shrink)

This article deals with the relationship between the creator of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and the Latvian-born Chilean professor of physiology – and endocrinologist and anthropologist – Alejandro (or Alexander) Lipschütz. Up till now, the historiography of psychoanalysis in Chile has ignored the existence of this relationship, that is to say, the fact that there exists an interesting exchange of correspondence as well as references to Lipschütz in some important works published by Freud and in Freud’s correspondence with the Hungarian psychoanalyst (...) Sándor Ferenczi. There are also references to works on psychoanalysis carried out by Lipschütz in Chile. The Freud–Lipschütz relationship allows us to examine two interesting topics in contemporary historiographical approaches to psychoanalysis. First, it permits us to reflect on the connections that Freud and Ferenczi sought to establish between psychoanalysis and biology (endocrinology in particular) as a strategy to address criticism of the scientific foundations of psychoanalysis and, therefore, to help legitimize psychoanalysis in the field of science. Second, the relationship between Freud, working in a culturally influential city such as Vienna, and Lipschütz, working in a ‘peripheral’ country such as Chile, paves the way to reflect on the consequences of a history of psychoanalysis written from the perspective of the ‘margins’. This is a history that focuses not on regions where early industrialization and modernization processes, along with an important academic and scientific tradition, help explain the interest in and reception of psychoanalysis, but on regions where different sets of conditions have to be examined to explain appropriation and dissemination processes. (shrink)

In recent years, several significant translations have been published by Vladimir Vasilyevich Starovoitov, which undoubtedly expand the ideas of Russian specialists about classical psychoanalysis, its criticism and the subsequent development of Freudian ideas. The article analyzes the works of John D. Sutherland, Ronald W.F. Fairbairn, Sandor Ferenczi and Benjamin Kilborne. An idea is given about the dynamically complex and contradictory process of the formation of psychoanalytic schools and individual teachings. The problems of the theory of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic technique (...) are considered, the issues of applied and clinical psychoanalysis, the development of personality and the emotional world of a person are discussed. (shrink)

No início do movimento psicanalítico, a Hungria foi um dos países pioneiros dentre os que acolheram e propagaram a psicanálise. Sándor Ferenczi, figura principal de desenvolvimento da psicanálise no país, abraçou a causa psicanalítica e se tornou um dos mais importantes teóricos de sua história. Responsável pela criação da Associação Psicanalítica Internacional, fundaria também a Sociedade Húngara de Psicanálise, instituição reconhecida pela originalidade de suas propostas. Além de Ferenczi, Melanie Klein, Michael e Alice Balint, Géza Roheim, dentre (...) outros, foram seus membros. Neste estudo de caráter histórico, o intuito é retomar todo o caminho trilhado pela instituição húngara, desde sua fundação até sua dissolução, em 1949. A identidade e o “espírito” investigativo daquela instituição se perpetuariam ao longo da história psicanalítica, influenciando, direta ou indiretamente, grandes escolas e teóricos da psicanálise, como D. W. Winnicott e alguns pensadores das escolas americanas e francesas. Palavras-chave: psicanálise; história da psicanálise; sociedade húngara de psicanálise; instituições psicanalíticas; Sándor Ferenczi.: Hungary was a place where psychoanalysis founded a great support and development at the beginning of psychoanalytical movement. Sándor Ferenczi, leading figure of psychoanalytical increase in the country, embraced the psychoanalytic cause and became one of its most important theorists and thinkers in history. Responsible for the foundation of the International Psychoanalytical Association, also created the Hungarian Psychoanalytical Society, an institution recognized for the originality of their proposals. Besides Ferenczi, Melanie Klein, Michael and Alice Balint, Géza Roheim, among others, were its members. In this historical study, the purpose is to resume the entire path taken by the Hungarian institution, from the foundation to its dissolution in 1949. The identity and the investigative “spirit” of that institution perpetuate throughout psychoanalytical history, influencing, directly or indirectly, great schools and theorists of psychoanalysis, eg, D. W. Winnicott and some thinkers of American and French schools. Keywords: psychoanalysis; psychoanalytical history; hungarian psychoanalytical society; psychoanalytical institutions; Sándor Ferenczi. (shrink)

The relationship existing between science and psychoanalysis has long been tense, critical, even hostile. Andre Haynal addresses this relationship by examining three questions: how is psychoanalytic "knowledge" established? what methodology and epistemology underlie psychoanalytic theory? and what are the historical circumstances that have shaped psychoanalysis? Haynal is familiar with the full spectrum of analytic thought and begins with a systematic discussion of analytic theory. The second part of the book covers a series of historical topics and includes discussions of Freud (...) and his relations with his followers. A chapter on Freud and his "favorite disciple," Sandor Ferenczi, is an engrossing account of the complex intellectual and personal connection the two men shared. (shrink)

_The Budapest School of Psychoanalysis_ brings together a collection of expertly written pieces on the influence of the Budapest conception of analytic theory and practice on the evolution of psychoanalysis. It touches on major figures Sándor Ferenczi and Michael Balint whilst concurrently considering topics such as Ferenczi’s clinical diary, the study of trauma, the Confusion of Tongues paradigm, and Balint’s perspective on supervision. Further to this, the book highlights Jacques Lacan’s teaching of Ferenczi, which brings a (...) fresh perspective to a relatively unknown connection between them. The book highlights that the Hungarian analysts, influenced by Ferenczi, through their pioneering work developed a psychoanalytic paradigm which became an alternative to the Freudian tradition. That this paradigm has become recognised and admired in its own right underlines the need to clearly outline, as this book does, the historical context and the output of those who are writing and working in the tradition of the Budapest School. The contributions to this volume demonstrate the widespread and enduring influence of the Budapest School on contemporary psychoanalysis. The contributors are amongst the foremost in Budapest School scholarship and the insights they offer are at once profound as well as insightful. This book is an important read for those practitioners and students of psychoanalysis who wish for an insight into the early and developing years of the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis and its impact on contemporary clinical practice. (shrink)

This book offers an analysis of the status and function of the Anglo-Saxon prognostics in their manuscript context, a study of their introduction to and transmission in Anglo-Saxon England, and, for the first time, a comprehensive edition of prognostics in Old English and Latin.

The idea that language is metaphoric in nature has often been suggested or stated since Vico and Rousseau. Derrida, too, often writes about metaphor and the impression he gives is that he is arguing for the metaphoric nature of both thought, whether philosophic or not, and language. Interpreters like de Man or Culler have helped to spread this impression. If it is correct, Derrida shares a pan-metaphoric view of language and whatever can be made with it. It is useful to (...) refer to Derrida's view because in my opinion he has been very good at saying what language is, even if he has been very much in the wrong in seeing no distinction between language and language use. Let us consider first what he has been good at. (shrink)

The principal purpose of the present volume is to analyse critically one of the major contemporary interpretations of the origin of support for radical or extremist political behaviour - the political theory of mass society. Mass political theory is one of several major perspectives on political extremism which share a stress on the social psychological, emotional and irrational origins of dissidence. The present work may be seen as part of a growing scholarly effort reassessing such theories and urging the importance (...) of increased attention to the social structure origins, cognitive nature and rational properties of dissident support. The present work should be of interest to a fairly broad professional community and student audience, as well as to the informed and more literate layman. Of particular interest may be the detailed summary of the origins of mass political theory and of the properties of the theory itself and the lengthy case study chapter stressing the purposive, reasonable and non-exceptional character of several familiar radical political movements. (shrink)

Three classes are introduced which are closely related to the class included in the title. It is proven that the class obtained from by replacing axiom C4 by the commutativity of single substitutions can be considered as the abstract class in the Resek–Thompson theorem, thus it is representable by set algebras. Then the class is defined and it is shown that the necessary and sufficient condition for neat embeddability of an algebra in CAα into is the validity of the merry-go-round (...) properties. Finally, the class is introduced which class is a counterpart of among the polyadic like algebras. (shrink)

We generalize the notions of Girard algebras and MV-algebras by introducing rotation-invariant semigroups. Based on a geometrical characterization, we present five construction methods which result in rotation-invariant semigroups and in particular, Girard algebras and MV-algebras. We characterize divisibility of MV-algebras, and point out that integrality of Girard algebras follows from their other axioms.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FROM SACRIFICIAL VIOLENCE TO RESPONSIBILITY: THE EDUCATION OF MOSES IN EXODUS 2-4 Sandor Goodhart Purdue University When toward the end of his life Moses tried to stave off death, God said to him: "Did I tell you to slay the Egyptian?" (Midrash in Plaut 383) I. Education in Plato and Judaism The word "education", of course, comes from the Latin, educare, meaning "to lead out" or "to bring up," (...) and both its Latinate morphology and the semantic value it assumes in English reflect its peculiar history. To "lead out" implies in the first place leadership, which is to say a relationship between one designated as a "leader" and another (or others) designated as the "led." The notion of leadership also entails a movement through which the leader propels the led, namely from a region designated as "inside," to another designated as "outside." Within the Western context, which is to say, within the Western European historical experience which traces itselfback through the romance language speaking countries to Rome and ultimately to Greece, the primary articulator ofthe notion of education we have inherited is, of course, Plato. Although Plato's Republic is nominally about justice, and even more specifically the "just" state, commentators have long pointed out that it is really about education (see, for example, Havelock). How shall the guardians ofthe state that we shall term "just" be educated?, Plato's interlocutors ask themselves. In this regard, of course, Plato was challenging the educational system already in place at the time at the head of which was Homer and the Homeric epics, and substituting for an older oral culture founded on an elaborate system of mnemonics another founded more decisively upon writing and the alphabet. Some have argued that in place of a aural or Sandor Goodhart1 3 hearing-centered culture Plato was inaugurating a visual or video-centric cultural organization, and much work is currently being done in this area (see, for example, Ong). What was Plato's educational solution? It was an appeal, in short, to the true, to the language of reason, and to the realm of the ontological as the context in which the true could be defined. The true, as the phenomenological tradition has taught us, may be regarded as the separation of that which has being from that which does not have being, that which only appears or seems to be from that which truly is. Reason in this context is the method or modality ofthinking by which such difference or distinction between the true and the false becomes articulated. Education may then be said to be the process by which all of this occurs, by which one learns to separate appearances from reality, the true from the false, the reasonable from the unreasonable, and thereby the process by which one avoids slavery. For at bottom the enemy for Plato remains slavery and the goal remains freedom from its ravages. Plato, for one, defines his program in specific opposition to Greek tragedy, which he takes among the species ofmimesis or of mimetic poesis that he cites to be the worst threat to his program of absolute difference. The tragic poets leave us without an antidote, he tells us, to its irresistible seductions. Even the best of us—by which he would certainly include Socrates, who has been educating these young men about the processes of education—go to the theater, follow the theatrical performance with enthusiasm, beat their breasts along with the players, and finally praise as most worthy those playwrights who most enable this enthusiasm to take place. The distinction between the true and the mimetic, between the true and the imitational or representational, between that which has being and that which only shadows being, is always on the verge of collapsing in this context. And as a consequence the only safe state, Plato tells us, is the one that excludes theatrical performance from its premises. There is no place in the present context to develop any further the complicated relationship Plato has with his predecessors, and I have hinted at this relationship elsewhere (see Goodhart 261). Suffice it to say that Plato remains in this regard the master in Western circles ofall... (shrink)

Sándor Radnóti looks at forgeries, artistic reproductions, replicas, variations, and pastiches in order to study the dilemmas surrounding artistic illusion and "poetic license." He reveals how forgeries as the parasites of art make clear and transparent the meaning of artistic orginality.

ABSTRACT As is well-known, a classical representation theorem of the theory of cylindric algebras is: A ε IGwsa if and only if A ε SNrαCAα+ε. The part “only if” is trivial. Regarding to the other part “A ε SNrαCAα+ε then A ε IGwsα“ the following question arises: is it possible to replace the class CA in the hypothesis A ε SNrαCAα+ε by a larger class so that the theorem still holds. Such a larger class Kα β is defined. The class (...) Kα β is the best possible, in a sense to be made precise. Representability of set algebras is investigated, too. (shrink)

In the present paper we show that any at most countable linearly-ordered commutative residuated lattice can be embedded into a commutative residuated lattice on the real unit interval [0, 1]. We use this result to show that Esteva and Godo''s logic MTL is complete with respect to interpretations into commutative residuated lattices on [0, 1]. This solves an open problem raised in.

For odd and for even involutive, commutative residuated chains a representation theorem is presented in this paper by means of direct systems of abelian o-groups equipped with further structure. This generalizes the corresponding result of J. M. Dunnabout finite Sugihara monoids.

We generalize the notions of Girard algebras and MV-algebras by introducing rotation-invariant semigroups. Based on a geometrical characterization, we present five construction methods which result in rotation-invariant semigroups and in particular, Girard algebras and MV-algebras. We characterize divisibility of MV-algebras, and point out that integrality of Girard algebras follows from their other axioms.

Hahn’s embedding theorem asserts that linearly ordered abelian groups embed in some lexicographic product of real groups. Hahn’s theorem is generalized to a class of residuated semigroups in this paper, namely, to odd involutive commutative residuated chains which possess only finitely many idempotent elements. To this end, the partial lexicographic product construction is introduced to construct new odd involutive commutative residuated lattices from a pair of odd involutive commutative residuated lattices, and a representation theorem for odd involutive commutative residuated chains (...) which possess only finitely many idempotent elements, by means of linearly ordered abelian groups and the partial lexicographic product construction is presented. (shrink)

Let be the class of odd involutive even the notion of partial lex products is not sufficiently general. One more tweak is needed, a slightly even more complex construction, called partial sublex product, introduced here.

A new structure, called equality algebras, will be introduced. It has two connectives, a meet operation and an equivalence, and a constant. A closure operator will be defined in the class of equality algebras, and we call the closed algebras equivalential. We show that equivalential equality algebras are term equivalent with BCK-algebras with meet. As a by-product, we obtain a quite general result, which is analogous to a result of Kabziński and Wroński: we provide an equational characterization for the equivalential (...) fragment of BCK-algebras with meet. (shrink)

After the rule of the canonized Marxism has come to an end, the present situation of philosophy in Hungary might be characterized as pluralistic and colourful. The academic, educational and institutional structure of philosophy, as well as the situation concerning the publication of journals and books has changed equally. In general, each of the relevant philosophical trends has gained its representation, significant individual and collective achievements have been reached, and we have also witnessed the rise of a new philosophical generation. (...) Though not as dominanting, philosophy has been integrated into Hungarian intellectual and public life. By now it is not regarded an isolated domain of knowledge as it was before. (shrink)

Spatio-temporal logic is a variant of branching temporal logic where one of the so-called causal relations on spacetime plays the role of a time flow. Allowing only rational numbers as space and time co-ordinates, we prove that a first-order spatio-temporal theory over this flow is recursively enumerable if and only if the dimension of spacetime does not exceed 2. The situation is somewhat different compared to the case of real co-ordinates, because we establish that even dimension 2 does not permit (...) recursive enumerability in this case. The proof of the result on rational spacetime involves a more deeper portion of spacetime geometry than the corresponding, more evident result for the real co-ordinates. (shrink)