The article is subjected to social-epistemological research of the concept “civilization”. We try to reconstruct logic of its development taking in mind an ambivalent relation between growth of a methodological mind of science and change of a cultural-historical context into which appropriate social ideas and cultural universals lives as an essential part of culture. The research shows that genesis of the concept “civilization” follows evolution of ideas which not simply reflect some theoretical-methodological and social-cultural conversion but also generate new forms and directions of social life. The study allows combining epistemological and sociological arguments while answering the question, why civilizational analysis is important for search of adequate interpretation of cultural-historical process. In addition, it lets to discuss possibilities and limits of different methodological ways of civilizational analysis in view of logic of this concept development. The last gives a good chance to succeed in finding a theoretical-methodological strategy of civilizational analysis appropriate, firstly, to the mainstream of methodological culture of thinking and, secondly, to those realities which are conceptualized by means of this concept.