Sam Harris Part III @ Cambridge WordFest – Post talk thoughts
Quick thoughts on Cambridge, I will wrap up the weeks events more conclusively tomorrow evening when we get back to Leeds for the last time!
Today after wandering around the rather beautiful city of Cambridge we met with Sarah’s family for tea before the final Sam Harris talk.
As I had figured, the format was to be the same as before; overview of the book, quizzing by a third party then Q&A with the audience. Ian McEwan did a good job teasing issues not in the opening talk, and he also led discussion on how the early reviews are misrepresenting both the book and Sam’s views in general.
Ultimately though, with all the quizzing and probing it was coming from people who largely agree with Sam. So I began thinking this afternoon, after skimming the headline of a Guardian article clashing Robert Winston with Sam on the compatibility of science and religion, whether someone like Winston would have been better on stage to ask really hard questions. After reading said article however, I see why that would be a complete waste of time. A) I suppose the idea of someone ripping into the work sitting next to you is not conducive to pimping your book! And B) a lot of the criticism TML is receiving is either undeserved or simply nonsensical.
Please don’t mistake the above paragraph for a unanimous approval of TML. Quite the opposite, it has it’s flaws as a book. What can’t be said of it however, is that it doesn’t pre-empt and quash the multitude of objections that currently being raised in the literary press. Sam bends over backwards, conceding where he may be misconstrued and of the points that may be intuitively troubling. But he does deal with them. In light of this, many reviewers appear to have either picked the book and put it down mid way through chapter one, or have not read it at all, writing reviews based solely on what others have written.
This isn’t the place to go any further with this, as I’m going to be reviewing the book (and it’s positive and negative reception) in depth over the course of the next week, so I will get back on to the talk itself!
The talk this evening was even shorter than Bristol, there must have been severe time constraints with getting the next speaker/audience into the chamber. This was worsened by two rather lengthy introductions (considering the allotted time for the whole event was 1 hour) and a few wrap up comments by the organisers. The latter came at the expense of audience questions, which whilst I suppose I’m never a big fan of the Q&A thing, it was stingy for the people that wanted to ask questions as they only got through 3 of them!
It was interesting that this was the first time we didn’t have to que for signings for long, as it appeared most people were there for Ian McEwan, and needless to say, they were rather disappointed as this was Sam’s event. WordFest marketed this as an Ian McEwan talk (posters and billing didn’t even feature or mention Harris) and more than a few grumbles were overheard on the way out of the chamber. I can’t imagine what a good percentage of the audience must have been thinking, coming out to listen to a fiction author and getting an hour of the scientific underpinnings of morality!
I was most interested to get the opinions of people who were going into the talk and the premise cold, with either little or no knowledge prior to the talk. Again, I’m going to go into this later in a fuller review, but needless to say, healthy debate was had over the curry afterwards! 
Great end to a fantastic strange little week. Finally got our picture with another of the 4 Horsemen!
More pics on my flickr
