This is the Twenty First Century

'(...If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes)'
This is not noticeably audible on the song, although it appears at the top of the lyric sheet. My speakers certainly wont go up loud enough to hear if it's there. Maybe there's an audiophile out there has heard it? Rich Harding said: "I'm pretty sure the quote is a misquote of 'If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes' by the replicant Roy Batty to the Chinese bloke who made the eyes for the replicants, from the Ridley Scott film Bladerunner."

'A wise man once said... ...And evolution'
Opinion is divided as to exactly which scientists are referred to in the song. Some best guesses follow.

My first thought was that it might be Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion. He emphatically states that we are all just a series of chemical reactions, and mechanical processes, powered by instinct. He brooks no leverage with the notion that there might be a soul or God. However, having learnt that Darwin wrote an entire book about flowers and their sex organs, I'm rather more inclined to think it's Darwin being referenced.

Rich Harding suggested Stephen Hawking as a candidate. Professor Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time, who certainly gets to the point of almost equating numbers and God.

'A wise man once wrote... natural selection'
Shaye Lewis said: "I think they're all different guys... I think the natural selection guy may be Darwin."

'The universe demystified, Astronomy instead'
Shaye Lewis said: "I think this line is a direct reference to Walt Whitman's When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer."

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

'There's a man up in a mirrored building And he just bought the world'
A general feeling is that this might refer to Bill Gates, although it could just as easily refer to someone like real-life James Bond villain Rupert Murdoch.


Songs with a link have explanations.

• Introduction 
• Between You and Me 
• Quartz 
• Map of the World 
• When I Meet God 
• The Fruit of the Wild Rose 
• Separated Out 
• This Is the 21st Century 
• If My Heart Were a Ball It Would Roll Uphill 
• Number One
  
  

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