It is impossible by means of inanimate material agency, to derive mechanical effect from any portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature of… - William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

Quaternions came from Hamilton after his really good work had been done, and though beautifully ingenious, have been an unmixed evil to those who have touched them in any way.

It is conceivable that animal life might have the attribute of using the heat of surrounding matter, at its natural temperature, as a source of energy for mechanical effect . . . .The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific enquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms.

Now I think hydrodynamics is to be the root of all physical science, and is at present second to none in the beauty of its mathematics.