Abstract: Chen Yinque's historical research has an important academic status in the field of humanities and social sciences in China. For a long time, the discussion of Chen Yinque's historical research has been largely confined to the scope of history and medieval studies. Social sciences such as sociology and political science have paid very little attention to Chen's works. The existing literature is often divided into two groups of scholars: those who follow the timeline of Chen's works to trace the content and style change in order to understand thehistorical progress of Chen's research and those who focus on Chen's unique methodology. Both groups neglect the general issues of his research tradition. Based on a careful reassessment of Chen's works, this paperattempts to locate the inner connections in Chen's writings and explore his inherent concern on the issue of “the birth of civilization”. Through a discussion of three keywords: idea, custom, and institution, the paper illustrates how Chen put his concern of general issues into concrete research. It is argued that these three keywords together constitute the internal foundation of Chen Yinque's consciousness on the question of “civilization occurrence”. The paper further explores the sociological implication of Chen's research tradition in the context of western learning and the theoretical significance of classical research tradition for the development of Chinese sociology.

Key words: institution, custom, thought, civilization, Chen Yinque