| 释义 |
chaos|ˈkeɪɒs|
[a. L. chaos, a. Gr. χάος ‘any vast gulf or chasm, the nether abyss, empty space, the first state of the universe’, f. vb.-stem χα- to yawn, gape.]
†1. A gaping void, yawning gulf, chasm, or abyss: (chiefly from the Vulgate rendering of Luke xvi. 26). Obs. (In Greek spec. ‘the nether abyss, infinite darkness’, a use also often glanced at by English writers.)
c1440Hylton Scala Perf. (W. de W. 1494) i. lxxvii, There is a grete chaos [1533 cause] that is to sayen a thycke derkenes betwene vs & the that we mowe not come to the ne thou tyll vs. 1582N. T. (Rhem.) Luke xvi. 26 Betweene us and you there is fixed a great chaos [Vulg. chaos, Gr. χάσµα, Wycl. derke place, Tind. greate space, Geneva great gulfe]. 1583Fulke Defence vii. 286 There is a great chaos, which signifieth an infinite distance between Abraham and the rich glutton. 1603Holland Plutarch's Mor. 975 (Trench) What thing soever cometh within the chaos of this monster's mouth..down it goeth. 1667Milton P.L. vi. 55 The Gulf Of Tartarus, which ready opens wide His fiery Chaos to receave thir fall.
2. The ‘formless void’ of primordial matter, the ‘great deep’ or ‘abyss’ out of which the cosmos or order of the universe was evolved.
1531Elyot Gov. (1875) 3 Take awaie Ordre frome all thinges, what shulde than remaine? Certes nothing finally, except some man wold imagine eftesoones, Chaos, whiche of some is expounded, a confuse mixture. 1559Primer in Priv. Prayers (1851) 101 That old confusion, which we call chaos, wherein without order, without fashion, confusedly lay the discordant seeds of things. 1605Bacon Adv. Learn. i. vi. §2 The order and disposition of that Chaos or Masse, was the worke of sixe days. 1649Selden Laws Eng. ii. i. (1739) 8 The whole Body like a Chaos capable of any form that the next daring spirit shall brood upon it. 1667Milton P.L. i. 10 In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth Rose out of Chaos. 1730Thomson Autumn 731 As when of old..Light uncollected thro' the chaos urg'd Its infant way. 1831Brewster Newton (1855) II. xvi. 99 The formation of the earth, and the other planets, out of a general chaos.
b. personified. (By some of the Greeks Chaos was made the most ancient of the gods.)
1651Hobbes Leviath. (1839) 99 The unformed matter of the world, was a god, by the name of Chaos. 1667Milton P.L. ii. 895 Where eldest Night And Chaos, Ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal Anarchie. 1728Pope Dunc. i. 10 Dulness o'er all possess'd her antient right, Daughter of Chaos and eternal Night. 1850Carlyle Latter-d. Pamph. vii. (1872) 243 If Chaos himself sat umpire, what better could he do?
3. transf. and fig.
a. A state resembling that of primitive chaos; utter confusion and disorder.
1606Shakes. Tr. & Cr. i. iii. 125 This Chaos, when Degree is suffocate. 1647Clarendon Hist. Reb. iii. (1843) 74/1 The whole mass of their designs, as well what remained in Chaos as what was Formed. 1651Hobbes Leviath. iii. xxxvi. 232 Reduce all Order..to the first Chaos of Violence, and Civill warre. 1819Arnold Life & Corr. (1844) I. ii. 59, I stand at times quite bewildered, in a chaos where I can see no light either before or behind. 1873Burton Hist. Scot. VI. lxv. 27 In Ireland all is confusion and chaos.
b. ‘Anything where the parts are undistinguished’ (J.); a confused mass or mixture, a conglomeration of parts or elements without order or connexion.
1579Gosson Sch. Abuse (Arb.) 53 They make their volumes no better than..a huge Chaos of foule disorder. a1631Donne Poems (1650) 36 Oft did we grow To be two Chaosses. 1709Pope Ess. Crit. 292 One glaring Chaos and wild heap of wit. 1781J. Moore View Soc. It. (1790) I. xi. 118 Arranging the vast Chaos of laws and regulations. 1878Black Green Past. xxxv. 283 The vessel went plunging on through the wild chaos of green and grey mists.
†4. transf. An undigested or amorphous mass or lump. Obs. (Cf. the ‘rudis indigestaque moles’ of Ovid, applied to Chaos in sense 2.)[1621G. Sandys Ovid's Met. i. (R.) One face had nature, which they chaos nam'd, An undigested lump.] 1562Eden Let. in 1st. Eng. Bks. Amer. (Arb.) Introd. 44/1, I stilled of the water from the masse or Chaos lefte of them bothe. 1593Shakes. 3 Hen. VI, iii. ii. 161 To disproportion me in euery part, Like to a Chaos, or an vn-lick'd Beare-whelpe.
†5. ? Element; environment; space. (Among Greek senses were ‘space, the expanse of air’.)
1621Burton Anat. Mel. i. ii. i. ii. (1676) 27/1 Paracelsus stiffely maintaines..that they [devils] have every one their severall Chaos..The water (as Paracelsus thinks) is their [Naiads'] Chaos, wherein they live. Ibid. ii. ii. iii. 155/2 Creatures, whose Chaos is the earth. 1753Chambers Cycl. Supp., Chaos, in the phrase of Paracelsus, imports the air. It has also some other significations amongst the alchemists.
6. attrib. and Comb., as chaos-flood, chaos-state; chaos-founded adj., chaos-like adj. and adv.
1611J. Guillim Heraldrie To Rdr., By dissoluing of this chaos-like or confused lump. 1684T. Burnet Th. Earth II. 109 Nature relapses hastily into that chaos-state. 1821Byron Heaven & Earth i. iii. 815 Come, Anah! quit this chaos-founded prison. 1831Carlyle Sart. Res. (1858) 164 Not a few..now swim weltering in the Chaos-flood.
Add:[3.] c. Math. Behaviour of a system which is governed by deterministic laws but is so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to its extreme sensitivity to changes in parameters or its dependence on a large number of independent variables; a state characterized by such behaviour.
The quotations before quot. 19742 do not represent precisely this sense.
1960Jrnl. Chem. Physics XXXIII. 1342/1 The chaos condition becomes more accurately satisfied as n becomes large. 1969Proc. Japan Acad. XLV. 450 Kac's propagation of chaos should hold for a wide class of Markov processes. 1974Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. LXXI. 2618/1 Equation 1.1 is based on the ‘molecular chaos assumption’. 1974Science 15 Nov. 646/2 Li and Yorke's general theorem for cycles of period 3 may be extended..to show that equations of the generic form of 1 and 2 will enter a regime of chaos, with an uncountable number of cycles of integral period along with an uncountable number of aperiodic solutions. 1975Jrnl. Theoret. Biol. LI. 514 The equation Nt+ 1 = λ[1 + aNt]-bNt has been used..to provide a two-parameter fit to a wide range of field and laboratory data on single-species population growth:..relatively large values of both b and λ leads [sic] to chaos. 1975Li & Yorke in Amer. Math. Monthly LXXXII. 985 (title) Period three implies chaos. 1978Jrnl. Math. Anal. & Applic. LXIII. 200 Although chaos was originally observed in the context of a hydrodynamical system, this phenomenon has spurred the interest primarily of mathematical biologists, particularly those in the field of population dynamics. 1988I. Peterson Math. Tourist vi. 144 The technical definition of chaos..carries with it an image of order in the midst of disorder. 1989I. Stewart Does God play Dice? i. 21 One of the characteristic features of chaos is that tiny errors propagate and grow. 1990Times 29 Oct. 2/1 The extraordinary thing about chaos is that you can get some mind-bogglingly complex behaviour from simple equations.
[6.] chaos theory, (a) nonce-wd., a theory based on the concept of chaos; (b) the mathematical study of chaotic systems and their behaviour.
1924R. M. Ogden tr. Koffka's Growth of Mind iii. 134 According to the chaos-theory the phenomena corresponding to a human face can be nothing but a confused mass of the most varied light-, dark-, and colour-sensations. [1986Nonlinear Analysis X. 541 (heading) On the existence of Li–Yorke points in the theory of chaos.] 1987Nature 23 Apr. 753/2 A survey of how determinism fares in various branches of physics, including classical mechanics, relativity theory.., probabilistic theories, modern chaos theory and the quantum theory. 1988Jrnl. Monetary Econ. July 73 Chaos theory deals with deterministic processes which look random but whose dimension is finite. |