CONCEPT
The Modern Constitution
The tacit agreement of modern thought that separates nature from society, facts from values, scientists from politicians — never voted on but ruthlessly enforced. The architecture AI, as the hybrid that cuts across every division, makes indefensible.
The modern constitution is Latour's term for the settlement that governs who may speak for what in modern societies. Scientists speak for Nature, with the authority of empirical objectivity. Politicians speak for Society, with the authority of democratic representation. Nature is the realm of facts, Society the realm of values. The constitution was never explicitly written or ratified, but it organizes how knowledge, power, and legitimacy are distributed across Western institutions. AI has broken it. The technology is simultaneously technical and social, factual and political, a hybrid whose governance demands deliberative structures that the constitution's purified categories cannot provide.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The constitution's stability depends on its two clauses working in tandem. Nature is presented as transcendent — existing independently of human politics, discovered but not constructed. Society is presented as immanent — constituted by human agreement, governed by human choice, open to deliberative revision. Scientists, as the authorized spokespersons