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Mark Elvin
John Mark Dutton Elvin FAHA (18 August 1938 – 6 December 2023) was an Australian academic. A professor emeritus of Chinese history at Australian National University, he specialised in the late imperial period. He was also emeritus fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford. Early lifeElvin, the only child of Lionel Elvin and Mona Bedortha Dutton, was born on 18 August 1938. He grew up in Cambridge, attended The Dragon School, and matriculated as an undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge. He held posts at the University of Glasgow and at St. Antony's College, Oxford.[1] CareerElvin is noted for his high-level equilibrium trap theory to explain why an industrial revolution happened in Europe but not in China, despite the fact that the state of scientific knowledge was far more advanced in China, much earlier than in Europe. Elvin proposed that pre-industrial production methods were extremely efficient in China, which obviated much of the economic pressure for scientific progress. At the same time, a philosophical shift occurred, whereby Taoism was gradually replaced by Confucianism as the dominant intellectual paradigm, and moral philosophy and the development of rigid social organization became more important than scientific inquiry among intellectuals. Elvin was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1993.[2] DeathElvin died on 6 December 2023, at the age of 85.[3] Works
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