Jochen Brüning, known not only as a mathematician but also through his interdisciplinary projects in the area of the liberal arts, will outline in his lecture the elements of a theory of collecting, which are derived from its phenomenology. For all its tentative nature, several interesting results arise which may be tested according to experience.

Jochen Brüning has been Professor at the Institut für Mathematik at the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin since 1995 and Managing Director of the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik in Berlin since 1999.