Gas = Chaos

The word 'gases' comes from Greek for 'chaos', probably from Gk. khaos "empty space" (see chaos), influenced by Paracelsus, who used khaos in occult sense of "proper elements of spirits" or "ultra-rarified water." Meaning "utter confusion" (c.1600) is extended from theological use of chaos for "the void at the beginning of creation" in Vulgate version of Genesis. The Gk. for "disorder" was tarakhe, however the use of chaos here was rooted in Hesiod ("Theogony"), who describes khaos as the primeval emptiness of the Universe, begetter of Erebus and Nyx ("Night"), and in Ovid ("Metamorphoses"), who opposes Khaos to Kosmos, "the ordered Universe." Chaos theory in the modern mathematical sense is attested from c.1977