These webpages were designed and written by Maarten Bullynck.
Contact: Maarten.Bullynck(at)kuttaka.org (remove the (at) ; replace with @)

Some Biographical Facts and Notes

I was born 1977 in Oostende, at the Belgian coast. As a young child, I was particularly fond of collecting shells at the North Sea beaches, collecting stones and getting to know the names of plants my father and I met on our walks together. As Adalbert Stifter writes in his freaky if not nightmarish bourgeois idyll Der Nachsommer: Das Sammeln geht der Wissenschaft immer voraus -- collecting, giving names and making up classifications are central to organising knowledge, and how knowledge gets organised has ever since been an important question to me.
At a later stage in life, I studied Mathematics first, then Germanic Languages, both at the University of Gent, Belgium. Being fascinated by both disciplines -- the riches of what one can do in and with natural languages & the fine-grained detail of mathematical doings -- I could not help studying both of them.
What got me caught in mathematics at first was (finite) group theory, by its elegance and power, but perhaps also because it has a touch of Linnaeus-like classification to it. Later, my interest turned to numbers, arithmetics and algorithms, through the experience of the computer and programming it, and thus returning from abstract mathematical concepts to a more earth-bound, intuitively nearer field of mathematics. (For my generation, Lego and somewhat later the computer may very well be defining experiences of life)
Language on the other hand was present everywhere, and using language(s) was fun. Theoretically, I confess my debt to intelligent structuralism (Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss, Vernant), but also the Harvey Sacks, the investigator of micro-structure in conversation. His dictum, if one has the formal structure of gossip, one has the formal structure of society, is unforgotten.
Since 2001 encounters at various places only added more flesh and meat to the idea, more drive to the doings. Gent, Berlin, Hamburg, Köln, Paris ...
2002-2006 I wrote a PhD, tackling archeological questions, or one could say, I tried to reconstruct some discursive prototypes still very much alive nowadays. This programme of reconstruction, trying to know, understand and become conscious of parts of our own history, was applied to the period 1765-1810 in Germany. It tried to get at both the everyday and specialised know-how at hand in 1765, this early modern time of information overflow, looking how "data-mining" became a recurrent theme, how all this ended up in and was transformed through educational programmes, leading up to such discursive formations as modern mathematics & modern linguistics. The full title of this PhD is Vom Zeitalter der formalen Wissenschaften. Anleitung zur Verarbeitung von Erkenntnissen anno 1800 vermittelst einer parallelen Geschichte (download as pdf here ).
After a visit to the Seminar für Ästhetik und Geschichte der Medien (Berlin), where I enjoyed 2002, 2006, in between and afterwards a generous and inspiring welcome, I am currently a postdoc researcher with an AvH-grant at the IZWT at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal, focussing on J.H. Lambert's multi-faceted work.

---

A personal bibliography:

published or in the process of being published:

1. Bullynck, M. (2006): Markovketten - Variationen im Computer. In: Die Künste im Zeichen ihrer Berechenbarkeit: Markov und die Folgen.  hg. von Ph. von Hilgers und W. Velminski (Berlin: Diaphanes-Verlag), S. 159–173. [A Version]

2. Bullynck, M. (2006):  Apeiron. Archimedes und die Grenzwerte des griechischen Alphabets. In: Schrift, Zahl und Ton im Medienverbund: Archäologie, Ereignis und Grenzwerte des griechischen Vokalalphabets. Hg. Ernst, Wolfgang et al. (München: Wilhelm Fink),  S. 171-198.

3. Bullynck, M and Goerlandt, I. (2005): The Semiotics of Einstürzende Neubauten's "X". Philament, Issue 7.

4. Bullynck, M. (2006): A Note on article 36 in Gauss’s Disquisitiones. A Ramificated Story in the Margin of  the Re-Writing of Section II. Simon Stevin - Bulletin of the Belgian Mathematical Society, 15 (3), pp. 945 -947.

5. Alberts, G.; Goldstein, C.; and Bullynck, M (eds., 2006)., Section history of Mathematics: Introduction,  Simon Stevin - Bulletin of the Belgian Mathematical Society, 15 (2), pp. 931-2.

6. Bullynck, M. (2006): "ein blosses Anweisen und Abschreiben" - On mathematical tables in late 18th century Germany. 16th Novembertagung on the history of mathematics, Paris 4th-6th November 2005.

7.  Bullynck, M. (2006/2008): The transmission of numeracy. Integrating reckoning in protestant North-German Education (1770-1810). Paedagogica Historica, 44 (5), S. 463–485.

8. Bullynck, M. (2007): Mathematical Data-processing around 1800: A historiographic experiment in data-mining. Abstracts – Alexander-von-Humboldt-Netzwerktagung, Bonn, 16-9 April 2007, p. 28.

9. De Mol, E. and Bullynck, M. (2008), A week-end off. The first extensive numbertheoretical computation on the ENIAC, Computability in Europe 2008. Logic and Theory of Algorithms, hg. von A. Beckmann; A. Dimitracopoulos und B. Löwe (Heidelberg, New York: Springer = vol. 5028 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science), S. 158– 168. (Preprint-Version)

10. Bullynck, M. (2007/2008), Modular Arithmetics before C.F. Gauss.” (forthcoming in Historia Mathematica, 24 pp.) (Preprint-Version)

11. Bullynck, M. (2007/2008): Decimal Periods and their Tables: A Research Topic (1765-1801). (forthcoming in Historia Mathematica, 23 S.) (Preprint-Version)

12. Bullynck, M. (2007/2008): Rechnen gegen die Zeit, Rechnen mit der Zeit F. X. Von Zachs ”Archiv der Beobachtungen” und C. F. Gauss’ Rechnung per rückkehrender Post (1800–1802). (erscheint September 2008 in: Zei(t)kritische Medienprozesse, hg. von A. Volmar (Berlin: Kadmos-Verlag), S. 181–197)

13. Bullynck, M. (2008): Leonhard Eulers Wege zur Zahlentheorie. In: Mathesis & Graphe. Leonhard Euler zum 300. Geburtstag, hg. von W. Velminski und H. Bredekamp (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag), S. 67–85. (Preprint-Version)

14. Bullynck, M. (2007/2008): A History of Factor Tables with Notes on the Birth of Number Theory 1668–1817. (will appear in Revue d’histoire des mathématiques, 68 S.) (Preprint-Version)

15. Bullynck, M. (2008): Stages towards a German mathematical journal. Will appear in: Les journaux savants dans l’Europe des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Formes de la communication et agents de la construction des savoirs, ed. by J. Peiffer and J.-P. Vittu (Amsterdam: Brepols). (12 S.) (Preprint-Version)

16. Bullynck, M. (2008): Presentation of J.H. Lambert’s text “Vorstellung der Größen durch Figuren” with two analyses of Lambert’s practice of visual strategies in his experimental studies. (will appear in Journal Electronique d’Histoire des Probabilités et de la Statistique / Electronic Journal for History of Probability and Statistics angenommen, 20 pp. +  20 pp. of Lambert's text) (Preprint-Version) (Lambert's original text)

17. Bullynck, M. (2008): Wie das Denken das Rechnen lieben lernte – Versuch in 5 Aufzügen. Will appear in: A MEN EΣTΩ. Ursprung der Wissenschaft. Friedrich Kittler zur Feier, hg. von G. Wildgruber und P. Feigelfeld (Berlin: Merve-Verlag). (17 S.) (Preprint-Version)

18. Bullynck, M. (2008): “Mathematical Tables and other Ways to Gauss and Computation.” (submitted to Archives for the History of Exact Sciences, 29 pp.) (Preprint-Version)

19. Bullynck, M. (2009): "Johann Lambert's Scientific Tool Kit. Exemplified by the Measurement of Humidity" (submitted to Science in Context, 20 pp.) (Preprint-Version)

Other writings:

1. Bullynck, M. (2006): Aspects of 18th Century Mathematical Socialisation. The Case of C.F. Gauss. [Preprint (not updated since 2006)]

2. Bullynck, M., 2006): C.F. Gauss’s Re-Writing of Section II De congruentiis primi gradus. [Preprint]

3. Bullynck, M., (2006): Eniacisms. Computations on the ENIAC: Some set-ups with various notes. (Written at the Seminar für Ästhetik, Berlin, November 2006) [First Version]

4. Bullynck. M. (2007): Chanting, counting, combining. Mathematical substructures in Samavedic chanting and Sanskrit grammar, ppt-presentation at the KHM. (Presentation)