Abstract: Employing documentary analysis within the framework of intellectual history, this study traces the “meta-problem” of reconciling “thought” (si) and “history” (shi) through their historical trajectories and conceptual lineages. It investigates the scopes, methods, and authorship in writing the intellectual history of sport, aiming to provide theoretical foundations and methodological reflections for this disciplinary endeavor. The articulation of sport intellectual history needs to address two foundational questions: the epistemological possibility of “thought” and the ontological constitution of “history”. Under the paradigm of the meta-problem, the research synthesizes their interconnected significance of “though” and “history”. In defining the “meta-problem”, it is necessary to explore the scope of writing the intellectual history of sport, interpret the research pathways embedded in historical documents, decode historical facts through socio-political contextualization of pivotal events, recover thinkers’ motivations, align with the problems inherent in historical thought, interrogate policy systems within institutional discourses. Only by doing so can the conceptual lineages and thematic cores of sport intellectual history be unveiled in a comprehensive way. In tracing “meta-problem”, it is necessary to combine the 5 methods of descriptive, interpretive, speculative, critical and continuous writing. The authorship of sport intellectual history originates from the scholar’s interpretative insights, and needs to answer the question: “Who is the author?” Writing itself constitutes the core meta-problem, requiring immersion into the symbiotic matrix where thought-as-process and history-as-structure coalesce. Only through such epistemic praxis can the profound logos embedded within sport intellectual history be systematically unveiled.

Key words: meta-problem, intellectual history, sport thought, history, writing, scopes, methodologies, authorship