Scientific autobiography of Jaap Hage 2018 In (hopefully) March 2018, I will publish a book entitled Foundations and Building Blocks of Law . This books presents and elaborates my work of the last decade on - the nature, and the different kinds, of rules - the nature and objectivity of different kinds of facts - the meanings of facts (as opposed to words or sentences) - normativity - the deontic furniture of the world (what many indiscriminately call norms ) - validity (both of sources and of rules) - powers and competences (not the same) - juridical acts (legal transactions) - rights and the Hohfeldian concepts - legal status Most likely, I will publish this book without the involvement of an international publisher. The reason is that I find it important that the book will be priced reasonably. It should not only be affordable for libraries, but also for PhD-students and other people who are not rich. Of course this means that I must take care of the publicity myself. If you are interested in the book and its future modest price, please send me an email message: jaap.hage@maastrichtuniversity.nl I will keep you updated as soon as the book appears. Feel free to inform others about this upcoming book! 2017 I finished writing my book on Foundations and building blocks of law (see under 2018). Then I started to work seriously on my new research project on Law and the Cognitive Sciences. Papers on the compatibilist fallacy and on the responsibility of autonomous agents are the first scientific output. Moreover, I have been involved (with others) in the foundation of the research network on Law and the Cognitive Sciences (LACS). 20162006 This decade has mostly been devoted to research on - basic legal concepts and legal ontology (for the book on Foundations and building blocks of law (see under 2018); - legal method(ology), including coherentism - (still) a bit on legal logic, mostly on rule conflicts in (international) law 2005 – 1997 After publishing Reasoning with rules it seemed important to take a step back from the technical details of this work and to investigate its philosophical presuppositions. I published a number of articles. What I considered to be the most important of them were published in an updated version in my book Studies in Legal Logic. 19961991 After moving to the Maastricht Law Faculty, I continued my research on Law and artificial intelligence. Soon the focus moved to the use of non-monotonic logics in law, and more particularly on the logic of (legal) rules. I developed a special logic (reason-based logic) for the reasoning with and the balancing of contributory reasons. This research culminated in the publication of my book Reasoning with rules. 19911989 In 1989 I moved from Leiden to Maastricht to work on a research project on the maintenance of software. This project was sponsored by the (predecessor of the) EU and required me to visit partners in the project in France, Italy and Spain. This experience has turned me into a big fan of European integration. My scientific output for this project consists of deliverables which, to my regret, have little scientific value. In 1991 I moved in Maastricht from the department of computer science to the law faculty. 19891987 Briefly before I finished my PhD-thesis, I started to work in the rapidly growing field of Law and computer science. Together with some colleagues in the Netherlands I founded Jurix, a foundation devoted to research on law and artificial intelligence. Nevertheless I got the feeling that my intellectual development in Leiden had led me into a dead end street. 19871983 During these years I wrote my PhD-thesis Feiten en betekenis . Even 30 years later I find it difficult to describe the precise topic of this thesis. It was tremendously important for my scientific development, however. The thesis contained the seeds for my later work on the logic of reasons. Moreover, it also contained much of the ontological work that would return in a more sophisticated way (I hope) in my Foundations and building blocks of law. 19831978 After finishing my law studies at Leiden University in 1978, I was so lucky to be hired immediately as an assistant professor at the law faculty from which I had graduated. I was even allowed to finish my philosophy study during working hours. This would presently not be possible anymore, but looking backward the investment by my faculty in me turned out to be justified. Thank you, Hans Franken!