From Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species:
When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at any great mechanical invention as the summing of the labor, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history (1859, 485-486).
What Darwin says about studying the pylogeny of organisms is as important for the study of human institutions. Just as species change based on piecemeal modifications made across generations, so are institutions. When we look at, say, the American Federal government, to really understand it, we have to understand how the Federal government has been used across different generations to solve different problems, and how it has, as a result, been modified across those generations. Just as the problem of paying for war debt after the American War of Independence left a mark on the form Federal government, so did Prohibition and so will the Affordable Care Act.
Understanding the evolution of the Federal government is thus very much a matter of understanding the many histories of the "many contrivances, each useful to the possessor" which have changed its form.
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