Functional explanation: A Debate z Debate on functional explanation in the social sciences y Assumption of institutional resilience and persistence in social system: One resolution or qualification offered by Philip pettit(2002) and harold Kincaid(2007 is that instead of tracing all the way back to the origins of species and assuming that there is the evolutionism at work as biologists do. social scientists could restrain themselves relate functional explanation to the origins of social institutions and instead simply applying functional explanation to account for the resilient patterns or persistent regularities in social world.Functional explanation: A Debate z Debate on functional explanation in the social sciences y Assumption of institutional resilience and persistence in social system: One resolution or qualification offered by Philip Pettit (2002) and Harold Kincaid (2007) is that instead of tracing all the way back to the origins of species and assuming that there is the evolutionism at work as biologists do, social scientists could restrain themselves relate functional explanation to the origins of social institutions and instead simply applying functional explanation to account for the resilient patterns or persistent regularities in social world. …